II

Summary

As Hugh recognised in this friend's entrance and face the light of welcome he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. “I haven't been able to wait, I’ve wanted so much to tell you—I mean how I’ve just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappendick, who was free and ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must have reached some time yesterday.”

The girl's responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. “Ah, the dear sweet thing!”

“Yes, he's a brick—but the question now hangs in the balance. Allowing him time to have got into relation with the picture, I’ve begun to expect his wire, which will probably come to my club; but my fidget, while I wait, has driven me”—he threw out and dropped his arms in expression of his soft surrender—“well, just to do this: to come to you here, in my fever, at an unnatural hour and uninvited, and at least let you know I’ve ‘acted.’”

“Oh, but I simply rejoice,” Lady Grace declared, “to be acting with you.”

“Then if you are, if you are,” the young man cried, “why everything's beautiful and right!”

“It's all I care for and think of now,” she went on in her bright devotion, “and I’ve only wondered and hoped!”

Well, Hugh found for it all a rapid, abundant lucidity. “He was away from home at first, and I had to wait—but I crossed last week, found him and settled it; coming home by Paris, where I had a grand four days’ jaw with the fellows there and saw their great specimen of our master: all of which has given him time.”

“And now his time's up?” the girl eagerly asked.

“It must be—and we shall see.” But Hugh postponed that question to a matter of more moment still. “The thing is that at last I’m able to tell you how I feel the trouble I’ve brought you.”

It made her, quickly colouring, rest grave eyes on him. “What do you know—when I haven't told you—about my ‘trouble’?”