"Yet that's what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?"
The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this went an imperturbable witness "I need hardly fear it perhaps if—in the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him—his pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech."
"Oh," Lord John returned, "he kills two birds with one stone—he sees both Sir Joshua and you."
This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair associate. "Does he want to buy their pride and glory?"
The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the bright reflector of her thought. "Is that wonder for sale?"
She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. "Not, surely, by any monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign———!"
"I can't fancy him—no!" And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort. "But a cat
