She felt the shadow, you would have seen, of his claimed right, or at least privilege, of search—yet easily, after an instant, emerged clear. "I've thought and dreamt but of you—suspicious man!—in proportion as the clamour has spread; and Mr. Bender meanwhile, if you want to know, hasn't been near me once!"
Lord John came in a manner, and however unconsciously, to her aid. "You'd have seen, if he had been, what's the matter with him, I think—and what perhaps Theign has seen from his own letter: since," he went on to his fellow-visitor, "I understood him a week ago to have been much taken up with writing you."
Lord Theign received this without comment, only again with an air of expertly sounding the speaker; after which he gave himself afresh for a moment to Lady Sandgate. "I've not come home for any clamour, as you surely know me well enough to believe; or to notice for a minute the cheapest insolence and aggression—which frankly scarce reached me out there; or which, so far as it did, I was daily washed clean of by those blest waters. I returned on Mr. Bender's letter," he then vouchsafed to
