III
"He can't bear to do it, poor man!" Lady Sand-gate ruefully remarked to her remaining guest after Lord John had, under extreme pressure, dashed out to Bond Street.
"I dare say not!"—Lord Theign, flushed with the felicity of self-expression, made little of that. "But he goes too far, you see, and it clears the air—pouah!
Now therefore"—and he glanced at the clock—"I must go to Kitty."
"Kitty—with what Kitty wants," Lady Sandgate opined—"won't thank you for that!"
"She never thanks me for anything"—and the fact of his resignation clearly added here to his bitterness. "So it's no great loss!"
"Won't you at any rate," his hostess asked, "wait for Bender?"
His lordship cast it to the winds. "What have I to do with him now?" "Why surely if he'll accept your own price—!"
Lord Theign t
