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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Outcry
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21969]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTCRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTCRY
+
+By Henry James
+
+1911
+
+
+BOOK FIRST
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+“NO, my lord,” Banks had replied, “no stranger has yet arrived. But
+I’ll see if any one has come in--or who has.” As he spoke, however, he
+observed Lady Sandgate’s approach to the hall by the entrance giving
+upon the great terrace, and addressed her on her passing the threshold.
+“Lord John, my lady.” With which, his duty majestically performed, he
+retired to the quarter--that of the main access to the spacious centre
+of the house--from which he had ushered the visitor.
+
+This personage, facing Lady Sandgate as she paused there a moment framed
+by the large doorway to the outer expanses, the small pinkish paper of
+a folded telegram in her hand, had partly before him, as an immediate
+effect, the high wide interior, still breathing the quiet air and the
+fair pannelled security of the couple of hushed and stored centuries, in
+which certain of the reputed treasures of Dedborough Place beautifully
+disposed themselves; and then, through ample apertures and beyond
+the stately stone outworks of the great seated and supported
+house--uplifting terrace, balanced, balustraded steps and containing
+basins where splash and spray were at rest--all the rich composed
+extension of garden and lawn and park. An ancient, an assured elegance
+seemed to reign; pictures and preserved “pieces,” cabinets and
+tapestries, spoke, each for itself, of fine selection and high
+distinction; while the originals of the old portraits, in more or less
+deserved salience, hung over the happy scene as the sworn members of a
+great guild might have sat, on the beautiful April day, at one of their
+annual feasts.
+
+Such was the setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman
+of considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided
+with that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such
+complacent company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists
+and turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue
+or easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no
+point more so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane
+future certain to be more and more offensive to women of real quality
+and of formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue to
+the antique confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, had
+given way to curiosity--that is to speculation--however disguised. She
+might have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid,
+but she would presumably have confessed, if put on her trial for
+restlessness or for intelligence, that she _was_, after all, almost
+clever enough to be vulgar. Unmistakably, moreover, she had still, with
+her fine stature, her disciplined figure, her cherished complexion, her
+bright important hair, her kind bold eyes and her large constant smile,
+the degree of beauty that might pretend to put every other question by.
+
+Lord John addressed her as with a significant manner that he might have
+had--that of a lack of need, or even of interest, for any explanation
+about herself: it would have been clear that he was apt to discriminate
+with sharpness among possible claims on his attention. “I luckily find
+_you_ at least, Lady Sandgate--they tell me Theign’s off somewhere.”
+
+She replied as with the general habit, on her side, of bland
+reassurance; it mostly had easier consequences--for herself--than the
+perhaps more showy creation of alarm. “Only off in the park--open to-day
+for a school-feast from Dedborough, as you may have made out from the
+avenue; giving good advice, at the top of his lungs, to four hundred and
+fifty children.”
+
+It was such a scene, and such an aspect of the personage so accounted
+for, as Lord John could easily take in, and his recognition familiarly
+smiled. “Oh he’s so great on such occasions that I’m sorry to be missing
+it.”
+
+“I’ve _had_ to miss it,” Lady Sandgate sighed--“that is to miss the
+peroration. I’ve just left them, but he had even then been going on for
+twenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you’ll
+find him, poor dear victim of duty, still _at_ it.”
+
+“I’ll warrant--for, as I often tell him, he makes the idea of one’s duty
+an awful thing to his friends by the extravagance with which he always
+overdoes it.” And the image itself appeared in some degree to prompt
+this particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider. “I
+should like to come in for the grand _finale_, but I rattled over in a
+great measure to meet a party, as he calls himself--and calls, if you
+please, even me!--who’s motoring down by appointment and whom I think I
+should be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in the hope
+of a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine _that!_”
+
+“I can imagine it perfectly,” said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently no
+perceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. “It quite sticks
+out of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waiting
+to see. But you haven’t then,” she added, “come from town?”
+
+“No, I’m for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly
+lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring.”
+
+Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no
+longer than was decent. “But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her
+preference, just settling down to bridge.”
+
+“Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day
+gets up----!”
+
+“Which the Duchess never does?”--Lady Sand-gate only asked to be allowed
+to show how she saw it. “She fights to the last, invincible; gathering
+in the spoils and only routing her friends?” She abounded genially in
+her privileged vision. “Ah yes--we know something of that!”
+
+Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye,
+fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in
+compassion. “You too then?”
+
+She wouldn’t, however, too meanly narrow it down. “Well, in this house
+generally; where I’m so often made welcome, you see, and where----”
+
+“Where,” he broke in at once, “your jolly good footing quite sticks out
+of _you_, perhaps you’ll let me say!”
+
+She clearly didn’t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal
+with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only
+decide to deal quite simply. “You can’t say more than I feel--and am
+proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they’re worried.”
+
+This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for
+him, if she would, all the facts equally. “And they’re worried now,
+you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of
+making a great noise if she isn’t paid? I ought to mind speaking of
+that truth,” he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of
+delicacy; “but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a
+bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.”
+
+Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. “Because poor Kitty Imber--who
+should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as
+I’ve had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible
+big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to ‘look to’
+even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly
+did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.”
+
+She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing
+to the note of free inquiry in Lord John’s reply. “You mean that our
+lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this
+time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?”
+
+His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide
+after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it.
+“Well, in that set----!”
+
+“My mother’s set?” However, if she could smile he could laugh. “I’m much
+obliged!”
+
+“Oh,” she qualified, “I don’t criticise her Grace; but the ways and
+traditions and tone of this house----”
+
+“Make it”--he took her sense straight from her--“the house in England
+where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder
+daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of
+others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of
+her reputation? Exactly so,” he went on before she could meet it with a
+diplomatic ambiguity; “and just that, I assure you, is a large part of
+the reason I like to come here--since I personally don’t come with any
+such associations.”
+
+“Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!”
+
+The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost
+as a liberty taken. “How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I
+represent?”
+
+She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. “Well, don’t you
+represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don’t
+you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_
+perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy
+old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our
+admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending
+yourself to dear Grace?”
+
+Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent
+infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing
+his chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough on
+some felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck,
+the strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with the
+young woman to whom our friends’ reference thus broadened still a
+vague quantity for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quite
+possible--and this despite an odd element in him that you might have
+described as a certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son of
+a noble matron recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed in
+no immediate or aggressive manner any imputable private heritage
+or privilege of arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiated
+fineness if his lustre hadn’t been a little prematurely dimmed. Active
+yet insubstantial, he was slight and short and a trifle too punctually,
+though not yet quite lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his
+eyebrow, the finish of his facial line, the economy of “treatment”
+ by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his
+meagre mouth to smile its spareness away.
+
+He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely,
+without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear
+instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and
+immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living
+at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied
+air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the
+ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly,
+you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he
+really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his
+interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable.
+
+“May I ask what you mean,” he inquired of Lady Sandgate, “by the
+question of my ‘arranging’?”
+
+“I mean that you’re the very clever son of a very clever mother.”
+
+“Oh, I’m less clever than you think,” he replied--“if you really think
+it of me at all; and mamma’s a good sight cleverer!”
+
+“Than I think?” Lady Sandgate echoed. “Why, she’s the person in all our
+world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what
+she wants through.” But she at once added: “That is _if_--!” pausing on
+it with a smile.
+
+“If what then?”
+
+“Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of
+cleverness without exception--and to have them,” said Lady Sandgate, “to
+the very end.”
+
+He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. “The
+very end of what?”
+
+She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be,
+and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. “Say of her so
+wonderfully successful _general_ career.”
+
+It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations
+short. “When you’re as clever as she you’ll be as good.” To which he
+subjoined: “You don’t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good
+she is.” This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might
+appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt
+with a more explicit challenge. “What is it exactly that you suppose
+yourself to know?”
+
+Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided
+to take everything. “I always proceed on the assumption that I know
+everything, because that makes people tell me.”
+
+“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as
+it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient
+to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional
+relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”
+
+She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question--_whether_ I
+am?”
+
+“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”
+
+She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best
+friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman
+with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here,
+as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m
+happy to say that--for my pleasure when I’m really curious--this doesn’t
+close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”
+
+“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way
+about it he’s likely to listen to me.”
+
+Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. “The
+person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must
+have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful
+wheedler, his elder daughter.”
+
+“Lady Imber’s _here?_” Lord John alertly asked.
+
+“She arrived last night and--as we’ve other visitors--seems to have set
+up a side-show in the garden.”
+
+“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her
+sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.
+
+“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well
+may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed
+them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”
+
+Lord John figured it a moment. “Lady Imber”--he ironically enlarged the
+figure--“_can_ lead people away.”
+
+“Oh, dear Grace,” his companion returned, “happens fortunately to be
+firm!”
+
+This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. “Not against
+_me_, however--you don’t mean? You don’t think she has a beastly
+prejudice----?”
+
+“Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what
+mayn’t--have happened between you.”
+
+“Well, I try to judge”--and such candour as was possible to Lord John
+seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. “But I’m in fear of seeing her
+too much as I want to see her.”
+
+There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to
+meet “Are you absolutely in earnest about her?”
+
+“Of course I am--why shouldn’t I be? But,” he said with impatience, “I
+want help.”
+
+“Very well then, that’s what Lady Imber’s giving you.” And as it
+appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense,
+she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in
+a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted
+control of stray signs and shy lights. “By telling her, by bringing it
+home to her, that if she’ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess
+will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.”
+
+Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet
+regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.
+“Well, and by _me_.” To which he added with more of a challenge in it:
+“But you really know what my mother will do?”
+
+“By my system,” Lady Sandgate smiled, “you see I’ve guessed. What your
+mother will do is what brought you over!”
+
+“Well, it’s that,” he allowed--“and something else.”
+
+“Something else?” she derisively echoed. “I should think ‘that,’ for an
+ardent lover, would have been enough.”
+
+“Ah, but it’s all one Job! I mean it’s one idea,” he hastened to
+explain--“if you think Lady Imber’s really acting on her.”
+
+“Mightn’t you go and see?”
+
+“I would in a moment if I hadn’t to look out for another matter too.”
+ And he renewed his attention to his watch. “I mean getting straight at
+my American, the party I just mentioned------”
+
+But she had already taken him up. “You too have an American and a
+‘party,’ and yours also motors down----?”
+
+“Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” Lord John named him with a shade of elation.
+
+She gaped at the fuller light “You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped
+was coming for me!”
+
+Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. “Had he told you so?”
+
+She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since
+her entrance. “He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes
+ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.”
+
+The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton
+Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did
+involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days
+to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my
+business.”
+
+Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich
+scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”
+
+He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced
+monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”
+
+“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her
+disappointment to almost any irony.
+
+“I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he
+arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should
+see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in
+particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus
+glad to assist him.”
+
+This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the
+listener’s mystification. “Then why--this whole week that I’ve been in
+the house--hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?”
+
+“Because our good friend here has had no reason”--Lord John could treat
+it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of
+all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought
+necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.”
+
+“I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just
+quavered--“if I had at all known he wanted it.”
+
+Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to
+pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that
+privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I’ve seemed to you
+to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality
+unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth
+while--as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.”
+
+This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady
+Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?”
+
+“Why, don’t you know her great Venetian family group, the
+What-do-you-call-’ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for
+which he paid her her price before he left the house.”
+
+She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her
+wistful thought: “Seven full-length figures? Her price?”
+
+“Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows,” said Lord John, “what he
+wants.”
+
+“And does he want only”--her wonder grew and grew--
+
+“What-do-you-call-’ems’?”
+
+“He most usually wants what he can’t have.” Lord John made scarce more
+of it than that. “But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington
+went _at_ him.”
+
+It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. “How
+horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!” But this was far from the
+end of her interest. “And is that the way he pays?”
+
+“Before he leaves the house?” Lord John lived it amusedly over. “Well,
+_she_ took care of that.”
+
+“How incredibly vulgar!” It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still
+other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington’s
+case, though she didn’t glance at this. “He makes the most scandalous
+eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother.” And then as richly to
+enlighten any blankness: “My tremendous Lawrence, don’t you know?--in
+her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily
+speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints:
+universally considered the masterpiece of the artist.”
+
+Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in
+which he wasn’t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind
+it. “And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?”
+
+She held her head high. “I’ve indignantly refused--for all his pressing
+me so hard.”
+
+“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 may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything.”
+
+These things might be, Lady Sandgate’s face and gesture apparently
+signified; but another question diverted her. “You’re clearly a
+wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you’re on such
+an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?”
+
+“‘Interested’?” he echoed; though it wasn’t to gain time, he showed, for
+he would in that case have taken more. “To the extent, you mean, of my
+little percentage?” And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
+smile on him: “Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about your
+great-grandmother--you’ve nothing to place?”
+
+It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when
+she spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared.
+“I ask because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to
+the--how shall I name it?--the common weal; and because of my general
+strong feeling that we don’t want any more of our national treasures
+(for I regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about
+the world.”
+
+“There’s much in this country and age,” he replied in an off-hand
+manner, “to be said about _that_,” The present, however, was not the
+time to say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it
+with a smile that signified sufficiency. “To my friends, I need scarcely
+remark to you, I’m all the friend.”
+
+She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to
+the terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this
+functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy
+interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as
+she turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. “It’s the friend
+then clearly who’s wanted in the park.”
+
+She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand
+a missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her
+companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where
+she had left it. “By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you’ll
+join them below the terrace.”
+
+“Ah, Grace hopes,” said Lady Sandgate for the young man’s encouragement.
+“There you are!”
+
+Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. “I rush
+to Lady Grace, but don’t demoralise Bender!” And he went forth to the
+terrace and the gardens.
+
+Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function.
+“Will you have tea, my lady?”
+
+This appeared to strike her as premature. “Oh, thanks--when they all
+come in.”
+
+“They’ll scarcely _all_, my lady”--he indicated respectfully that he
+knew what he was talking about. “There’s tea in her ladyship’s tent;
+but,” he qualified, “it has also been ordered for the saloon.”
+
+“Ah then,” she said cheerfully, “Mr. Bender will be glad--!” And she
+became, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banks
+considered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by the
+footman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. “Here
+he must be, my lady.” With which he retired to the spacious opposite
+quarter, where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed,
+retreated as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, received
+the many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord John’s
+irritating confidence and of Lady Lappington’s massive cheque.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both hands
+out, she had at once gone on: “You’ll of course have tea?--in the
+saloon.”
+
+But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolve
+before sounding. “Why; the very first thing?”
+
+She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. “Ah, have it the
+last if you like!”
+
+“You see your English teas--!” he pleaded as he looked about him, so
+immediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents that
+his friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which he
+must have swept Lady Lappington’s inferior scene.
+
+“They’re too much for you?”
+
+“Well, they’re too many. I think I’ve had two or three on the road--at
+any rate my man did. I like to do business before--” But his sequence
+dropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
+
+She divertedly picked it up. “Before tea, Mr. Bender?”
+
+“Before everything, Lady Sandgate.” He was immensely genial, but a
+queer, quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safe--for
+himself.
+
+“Then you’ve _come_ to do business?” Her appeal and her emphasis melted
+as into a caress--which, however, spent itself on his large high person
+as he consented, with less of demonstration but more of attention, to
+look down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by an intenser
+note. “To tell me you _will_ treat?”
+
+Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having received
+benefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shone
+as with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointed
+sanity and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair of
+very ample wings--wide pinions for the present conveniently folded, but
+that he would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spread
+for great flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable,
+even a worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had not
+the affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular.
+Fortune, felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at his
+cradle-side--whatever the ministering power might have been--had simply
+overlooked and neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showed
+not so much for perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neither
+formed nor fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have been
+done for it but what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush and
+the looking-glass could officiously do; it had in short resisted
+any possibly finer attrition at the hands of fifty years of offered
+experience. It had developed on the lines, if lines they could be
+called, of the mere scoured and polished and initialled “mug” rather
+than to any effect of a composed physiognomy; though we must at the
+same time add that its wearer carried this featureless disk as with the
+warranted confidence that might have attended a warning headlight or
+a glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named it, showed you at
+least where he was, and most often that he was straight upon you. It
+was fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance that Lady
+Sandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that he
+soon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. “For your
+grandmother, Lady Sandgate?” he then returned.
+
+“For my grandmother’s _mother_, Mr. Bender--the most beautiful woman
+of her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as you
+quite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street.”
+
+Mr. Bender bethought himself further--yet drawing it out; as if the
+familiar fact of his being “made up to” had never had such special
+softness and warmth of pressure. “Do you want very, _very_ much----?”
+
+She had already caught him up. “‘Very, very much’ for her? Well, Mr.
+Bender,” she smilingly replied, “I think I should like her full value.”
+
+“I mean”--he kindly discriminated--“do you want so badly to work her
+off?”
+
+“It would be an intense convenience to me--so much so that your telegram
+made me at once fondly hope you’d be arriving to conclude.”
+
+Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was the
+mere frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient range
+elsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kind
+even while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one of
+the several, the famous Dedborough pictures--stray specimens, by every
+presumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. “‘Conclude’?” he
+echoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. “You ladies want
+to get there before the road’s so much as laid or the country’s safe! Do
+you know what this _here_ is?” he at once went on.
+
+“Oh, you can’t have _that!_” she cried as with full authority--“and
+you must really understand that you can’t have everything. You mustn’t
+expect to ravage Dedborough.”
+
+He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. “I guess it’s a bogus
+Cuyp--but I know Lord Theign _has_ things. He won’t do business?”
+
+“He’s not in the least, and can never be, in my tight place,” Lady
+Sandgate replied; “but he’s as proud as he’s kind, dear man, and
+as solid as he’s proud; so that if you came down under a different
+impression--!” Well, she could only exhale the folly of his error with
+an unction that represented, whatever he might think of it, all her
+competence to answer for their host.
+
+He scarce thought of it enough, on any side, however, to be diverted
+from prior dispositions. “I came on an understanding that I should find
+my friend Lord John, and that Lord Theign would, on his introduction,
+kindly let me look round. But being before lunch in Bruton Street I
+knocked at your door----”
+
+“For another look,” she quickly interposed, “at my Lawrence?”
+
+“For another look at _you_, Lady Sandgate--your great-grandmother wasn’t
+required. Informed you were here, and struck with the coincidence of my
+being myself presently due,” he went on, “I despatched you my wire, on
+coming away, just to keep up your spirits.”
+
+“You _don’t_ keep them up, you depress them to anguish,” she almost
+passionately protested, “when you don’t tell me you’ll treat!”
+
+He paused in his preoccupation, his perambulation, conscious evidently
+of no reluctance that was worth a scene with so charming and so hungry
+a woman. “Well, if it’s a question of your otherwise suffering torments,
+may I have another interview with the old lady?”
+
+“Dear Mr. Bender, she’s in the flower of her youth; she only yearns for
+interviews, and you may have,” Lady Sandgate earnestly declared, “as
+many as you like.”
+
+“Oh, you must be there to protect me!”
+
+“Then as soon as I return----!”
+
+“Well,”--it clearly cost him little to say--“I’ll come right round.”
+
+She joyously registered the vow. “Only meanwhile then, please, never a
+word!”
+
+“Never a word, certainly. But where all this time,” Mr. Bender asked,
+“is Lord John?”
+
+Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a young
+woman who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorway
+to the terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature and
+simply dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade of
+a large hat surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyes
+had vaguely questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to the
+gentleman forming the subject of their inquiry: “Lady Grace must know.”
+ At this the young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced the
+visitor. “My dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender.”
+
+The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation,
+but she had urbanity to spare. “Of whom Lord John has told me,” she
+returned, “and whom I’m glad to see. Lord John,” she explained to his
+waiting friend, “is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big
+Temperance school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if
+you care to go out--!” She gave him in fine his choice.
+
+But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn’t
+the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his
+prudence. “Are there any pictures in the park?”
+
+Lady Grace’s facial response represented less humour perhaps, but more
+play. “We find our park itself rather a picture.”
+
+Mr. Bender’s own levity at any rate persisted. “With a big Temperance
+school-feast?”
+
+“Mr. Bender’s a great judge of pictures,” Lady Sandgate said as to
+forestall any impression of excessive freedom.
+
+“Will there be more tea?” he pursued, almost presuming on this.
+
+It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. “Oh, there’ll
+be plenty of tea.”
+
+This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. “Well, Lady Grace, I’m after
+pictures, but I take them ‘neat.’ May I go right round here?”
+
+“Perhaps, love,” Lady Sandgate at once said, “you’ll let me show him.”
+
+“A moment, dear”--Lady Grace gently demurred. “Do go round,” she
+conformably added to Mr. Bender; “take your ease and your time.
+Everything’s open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,
+you’ll have the place to yourself.”
+
+He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. “I’ll be in
+clover--sure!” But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture,
+which he could fluently enough name. “And I’ll find ‘The Beautiful
+Duchess of Waterbridge’?”
+
+She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the
+quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. “At the
+very end of _those_ rooms.”
+
+He had wide eyes for the vista. “About thirty in a row, hey?” And he was
+already off. “I’ll work right through!”
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. “Lord John
+warned me he was ‘funny’--but you already know him?”
+
+There might have been a sense of embarrassment in the way in which, as
+to gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the small
+picture pronounced upon by Mr. Bender. “He thinks your little Cuyp a
+fraud.”
+
+“That one?” Lady Grace could but stare. “The wretch!” However, she made,
+without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous question.
+“You’ve met him before?”
+
+“Just a little--in town. Being ‘after pictures’” Lady Sandgate
+explained, “he has been after my great-grandmother.”
+
+“She,” said Lady Grace with amusement, “must have found him funny! But
+he can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord
+John, and while you, if you’ll be so good, go back to support father--in
+the hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that
+he complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as
+sneaking away.”
+
+Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. “I delight in
+his triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it’s a
+question of support, aren’t you yourself failing him quite as much?”
+
+This had, however, no effect on the girl’s confidence. “Ah, my dear, I’m
+not at all the same thing, and as I’m the person in the world he least
+misses--” Well, such a fact spoke for itself.
+
+“You’ve been free to return and wait for Lord John?”--that was the
+sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as
+speaking.
+
+The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though
+very quietly, to correct her. “I’ve not come back to wait for Lord
+John.”
+
+“Then he hasn’t told you--if you’ve talked--with what idea he has come?”
+
+Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.
+“Kitty has told me--what it suits her to pretend to suppose.”
+
+“And Kitty’s pretensions and suppositions always go with what
+happens--at the moment, among all her wonderful happenings--to suit
+her?”
+
+Lady Grace let that question answer itself--she took the case up further
+on. “What I can’t make out is why this _should_ so suit her!”
+
+“And what _I_ can’t!” said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and
+turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless
+presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. “Do you like
+him enough to risk the chance of Kitty’s being for once right?”
+
+Lady Grace gave it a thought--with which she moved away. “I don’t know
+how much I like him!”
+
+“Nor how little!” cried her friend, who evidently found amusement in the
+tone of it. “And you’re not disposed to take the time to find out? He’s
+at least better than the others.”
+
+“The ‘others’?”--Lady Grace was blank for them.
+
+“The others of his set.”
+
+“Oh, his set! That wouldn’t be difficult--by what I imagine of some of
+them. But he means well enough,” the girl added; “he’s very charming and
+does me great honour.”
+
+It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief
+arrest. “Then may I tell your father?”
+
+This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the
+subject. “Tell my father, please, that I’m expecting Mr. Crimble; of
+whom I’ve spoken to him even if he doesn’t remember, and who bicycles
+this afternoon ten miles over from where he’s staying--with some people
+we don’t know--to look at the pictures, about which he’s awfully keen.”
+
+Lady Sandgate took it in. “Ah, like Mr. Bender?”
+
+“No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender.”
+
+This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought “May I ask
+then--if one’s to meet him--who he is?”
+
+“Oh, father knows--or ought to--that I sat next him, in London, a month
+ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and
+nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of
+Connoisseurship--which is upsetting, as perhaps you’re not aware, all
+the old-fashioned canons of art-criticism, everything we’ve stupidly
+thought right and held dear; that he was to spend Easter in these parts,
+and that he should like greatly to be allowed some day to come over and
+make acquaintance with our things. I told him,” Lady Grace wound
+up, “that nothing would be easier; a note from him arrived before
+dinner----”
+
+Lady Sandgate jumped the rest “And it’s for him you’ve come in.”
+
+“It’s for him I’ve come in,” the girl assented with serenity.
+
+“Very good--though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first just
+tell me _this_--whether when you sent in ten minutes ago for Lord John
+to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?” And she followed
+it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. “Was it because you knew
+why he had arrived?”
+
+The young friend hesitated still. “‘Why ‘?”
+
+“So particularly to speak to you.”
+
+“Since he was expected and mightn’t know where I was,” Lady Grace said
+after an instant, “I wanted naturally to be civil to him.”
+
+“And had he time there to tell you,” Lady Sand-gate asked, “how very
+civil he wants to be to you?”
+
+“No, only to tell me that his friend--who’s off there--was coming; for
+Kitty at once appropriated him and was still in possession when I came
+away.” Then, as deciding at last on perfect frankness, Lady Grace went
+on: “If you want to know, I sent for news of him because Kitty insisted
+on my doing so; saying, so very oddly and quite in her own way, that she
+herself didn’t wish to ‘appear in it.’ She had done nothing but say to
+me for an hour, rather worryingly, what you’ve just said--that it’s
+me he’s what, like Mr. Bender, she calls ‘after’; but as soon as
+he appeared she pounced on him, and I left him--I assure you quite
+resignedly--in her hands.”
+
+“She wants”--it was easy for Lady Sandgate to remark--“to talk of you to
+him.”
+
+“I don’t know _what_ she wants,” the girl replied as with rather a tired
+patience; “Kitty wants so many things at once. She always wants money,
+in quantities, to begin with--and all to throw so horribly away; so that
+whenever I see her ‘in’ so very deep with any one I always imagine her
+appealing for some new tip as to how it’s to be come by.”
+
+“Kitty’s an abyss, I grant you, and with my disinterested devotion to
+your father--in requital of all his kindness to me since Lord Sandgate’s
+death and since your mother’s--I can never be too grateful to you, my
+dear, for your being so different a creature. But what is she going to
+gain financially,” Lady Sand-gate pursued with a strong emphasis on
+her adverb, “by working up our friend’s confidence in your listening to
+him--if you _are_ to listen?”
+
+“I haven’t in the least engaged to listen,” said Lady Grace--“it will
+depend on the music he makes!” But she added with light cynicism:
+“Perhaps she’s to gain a commission!”
+
+“On his fairly getting you?” And then as the girl assented by silence:
+“Is he in a position to pay her one?” Lady Sandgate asked.
+
+“I dare say the Duchess is!”
+
+“But do you see the Duchess _producing_ money--with all that Kitty, as
+we’re not ignorant, owes her? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds!”--Lady
+Sandgate piled them up.
+
+Her young friend’s gesture checked it. “Ah, don’t tell me how many--it’s
+too sad and too ugly and too wrong!” To which, however, Lady Grace
+added: “But perhaps that will be just her way!” And then as her
+companion seemed for the moment not quite to follow: “By letting Kitty
+off her debt.”
+
+“You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?”
+
+“Kitty goes free.”
+
+“She has her creditor’s release?”
+
+“For every shilling.”
+
+“And if he only fails?”
+
+“Why then of course,” said now quite lucid Lady Grace, “she throws
+herself more than ever on poor father.”
+
+“Poor father indeed!”--Lady Sandgate richly sighed it
+
+It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess.
+“Yes--but he after all and in spite of everything adores her.”
+
+“To the point, you mean”--for Lady Sandgate could clearly but
+wonder--“of really sacrificing you?”
+
+The weight of Lady Grace’s charming deep eyes on her face made her
+pause while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange
+determined in the girl a grave appeal. “You think I _should_ be
+sacrificed if I married him?”
+
+Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly.
+“_Could_ you marry him?”
+
+Lady Grace waited a moment “Do you mean for Kitty?”
+
+“For himself even--if they should convince you, among them, that he
+cares for you.”
+
+Lady Grace had another delay. “Well, he’s his awful mother’s son.”
+
+“Yes--but you wouldn’t marry his mother.”
+
+“No--but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately
+conscious of her.”
+
+“Even when,” Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, “she so markedly likes
+you?”
+
+This determined in the girl a fine impatience. “She doesn’t ‘like’ me,
+she only _wants_ me--which is a very different thing; wants me for
+my father’s so particularly beautiful position, and my mother’s so
+supremely great people, and for everything we have been and have done,
+and still are and still have: except of course poor not-at-all-model
+Kitty.”
+
+To this luminous account of the matter Lady Sand-gate turned as to a
+genial sun-burst. “I see indeed--for the general immaculate connection.”
+
+The words had no note of irony, but Lady Grace, in her great
+seriousness, glanced with deprecation at the possibility. “Well, we
+_haven’t_ had false notes. We’ve scarcely even had bad moments.”
+
+“Yes, you’ve been beatific!”--Lady Sandgate enviously, quite ruefully,
+felt it. But any further treatment of the question was checked by the
+re-entrance of the footman--a demonstration explained by the concomitant
+appearance of a young man in eyeglasses and with the ends of his
+trousers clipped together as for cycling. “This must be your friend,”
+ she had only time to say to the daughter of the house; with which, alert
+and reminded of how she was awaited elsewhere, she retreated before her
+companion’s visitor, who had come in with his guide from the vestibule.
+She passed away to the terrace and the gardens, Mr. Hugh Crimble’s
+announced name ringing in her ears--to some effect that we are as yet
+not qualified to discern.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Lady Grace had turned to meet Mr. Hugh Crimble, whose pleasure in at
+once finding her lighted his keen countenance and broke into easy words.
+“So awfully kind of you--in the midst of the great doings I noticed--to
+have found a beautiful minute for me.”
+
+“I left the great doings, which are almost over, to every one’s relief,
+I think,” the girl returned, “so that your precious time shouldn’t be
+taken to hunt for me.”
+
+It was clearly for him, on this bright answer, as if her white hand
+were holding out the perfect flower of felicity. “You came in from your
+revels on purpose--with the same charity you showed me from that first
+moment?” They stood smiling at each other as in an exchange of sympathy
+already confessed--and even as if finding that their relation had grown
+during the lapse of contact; she recognising the effect of what they had
+originally felt as bravely as he might name it. What the fine, slightly
+long oval of her essentially quiet face--quiet in spite of certain vague
+depths of reference to forces of the strong high order, forces involved
+and implanted, yet also rather spent in the process--kept in range
+from under her redundant black hat was the strength of expression, the
+directness of communication, that her guest appeared to borrow from
+the unframed and unattached nippers unceasingly perched, by their
+mere ground-glass rims, as she remembered, on the bony bridge of his
+indescribably authoritative (since it was at the same time decidedly
+inquisitive) young nose. She must, however, also have embraced in this
+contemplation, she must more or less again have interpreted, his main
+physiognomic mark, the degree to which his clean jaw was underhung
+and his lower lip protruded; a lapse of regularity made evident by a
+suppression of beard and moustache as complete as that practised by Mr.
+Bender--though without the appearance consequent in the latter’s case,
+that of the flagrantly vain appeal in the countenance for some other
+exhibition of a history, of a process of production, than this so
+superficial one. With the interested and interesting girl sufficiently
+under our attention while we thus try to evoke her, we may even make out
+some wonder in her as to why the so perceptibly protrusive lower lip of
+this acquaintance of an hour or two should positively have contributed
+to his being handsome instead of much more logically interfering with
+it. We might in fact in such a case even have followed her into another
+and no less refined a speculation--the question of whether the surest
+seat of his good looks mightn’t after all be his high, fair, if somewhat
+narrow, forehead, crowned with short crisp brown hair and which, after
+a fashion of its own, predominated without overhanging. He spoke after
+they had stood just face to face almost long enough for awkwardness. “I
+haven’t forgotten one item of your kindness to me on that rather bleak
+occasion.”
+
+“Bleak do you call it?” she laughed. “Why I found it, rather,
+tropical--‘lush.’ My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of
+the White City.”
+
+“Then you made it doubtless bleak for _him_, let us say. _I_ couldn’t
+let you alone, I remember, about _this_--it was like a shipwrecked
+signal to a sail on the horizon.” “This” obviously meant for the young
+man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender, to be
+conscious of a thick solicitation of the eye--and much more
+than he, doubtless, of a tug at the imagination; and he
+broke--characteristically, you would have been sure--into a great free
+gaiety of recognition.
+
+“Oh, we’ve nothing particular in the hall,” Lady Grace amiably objected.
+
+“Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I’m an ogre,” he said--“before a
+new and rare feast!”
+
+She happily took up his figure. “Then won’t you begin--as a first
+course--with tea after your ride? If the other, that is--for there has
+been an ogre before you--has left any.”
+
+“Some tea, with pleasure”--he looked all his longing; “though when you
+talk of a fellow-feaster I should have supposed that, on such a day
+as this especially, you’d find yourselves running a continuous _table
+d’hôte_.”
+
+“Ah, we can’t work sports in our gallery and saloon--the banging or
+whacking and shoving amusements that are all most people care for;
+unless, perhaps,” Lady Grace went on, “your own peculiar one, as I
+understand you, of playing football with the old benighted traditions
+and attributions you everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old
+idiotic superstitions.”
+
+Hugh Crimble went more than half-way to meet this description of his
+fondest activity; he indeed even beckoned it on. “The names and stories
+and styles--the so often vain legend, not to be too invidious--of author
+or subject or school?” But he had a drop, no less, as from the sense of a
+cause sometimes lost. “Ah, that’s a game at which we _all_ can play!”
+
+“Though scarcely,” Lady Grace suggested, “at which we all can score.”
+
+The words appeared indeed to take meaning from his growing impression
+of the place and its charm--of the number of objects, treasures of art,
+that pressed for appreciation of their importance. “Certainly,” he said,
+“no one can ever have scored much on sacred spots of _this_ order--which
+express so the grand impunity of their pride, their claims, their
+assurance!”
+
+“We’ve had great luck,” she granted--“as I’ve just been reminded;
+but ever since those terrible things you told me in town--about the
+tremendous tricks of the whirligig of time and the aesthetic fools’
+paradise in which so many of us live--I’ve gone about with my heart in
+my mouth. Who knows that while I talk Mr. Bender mayn’t be pulling us to
+pieces?”
+
+Hugh Crimble had a shudder of remembrance. “Mr. Bender?”
+
+“The rich American who’s going round.”
+
+It gave him a sharper shock. “The wretch who bagged Lady Lappington’s
+Longhi?”
+
+Lady Grace showed surprise. “Is he a wretch?”
+
+Her visitor but asked to be extravagant. “Rather--the scoundrel. He
+offered his infernal eight thousand down.”
+
+“Oh, I thought you meant he had played some trick!”
+
+“I wish he had--he could then have been collared.”
+
+“Well,” Lady Grace peacefully smiled, “it’s no use his offering _us_
+eight thousand--or eighteen or even eighty!”
+
+Hugh Crimble stared as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance,
+almost crude on exquisite lips and contradicting an imputation no one
+would have indecently made. “Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man
+surely doesn’t _suppose_ you’d traffic.”
+
+She might, while she still smiled at him, have been fairly enjoying the
+friendly horror she produced. “I don’t quite know what he supposes. But
+people _have_ trafficked; people do; people are trafficking all round.”
+
+“Ah,” Hugh Crimble cried, “that’s what deprives me of my rest and, as
+a lover of our vast and beneficent art-wealth, poisons my waking hours.
+That art-wealth is at the mercy of a leak there appears no means of
+stopping.” She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent
+flood might almost at any moment become copious. “Precious things are
+going out of our distracted country at a quicker rate than the very
+quickest--a century and more ago--of their ever coming in.”
+
+She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom
+stirred thought soon found connections and relations. “Well, I suppose
+our art-wealth came in--save for those awkward Elgin Marbles!--mainly
+by purchase too, didn’t it? We ourselves largely took it away from
+somewhere, didn’t we? We didn’t _grow_ it all.”
+
+“We grew some of the loveliest flowers--and on the whole to-day the most
+exposed.” He had been pulled up but for an instant. “Great Gainsboroughs
+and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and Constables
+and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you’ll recognise, a vast garden in
+themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully grown than
+your splendid ‘Duchess of Waterbridge’?”
+
+The girl showed herself ready at once to recognise under his eloquence
+anything he would. “Yes--it’s our Sir Joshua, I believe, that Mr. Bender
+has proclaimed himself particularly ‘after.’”
+
+It brought a cloud to her friend’s face. “Then he’ll be capable of
+anything.”
+
+“Of anything, no doubt, but of making my father capable--! And you
+haven’t at any rate,” she said, “so much as seen the picture.”
+
+“I beg your pardon--I saw it at the Guildhall three years ago; and am
+almost afraid of getting again, with a fresh sense of its beauty, a
+livelier sense of its danger.”
+
+Lady Grace, however, was so far from fear that she could even afford
+pity. “Poor baffled Mr. Bender!”
+
+“Oh, rich and confident Mr. Bender!” Crimble cried. “Once given his
+money, his confidence is a horrid engine in itself--there’s the rub!
+I dare say”--the young man saw it all--“he has brought his poisonous
+cheque.”
+
+She gave it her less exasperated wonder. “One has heard of that, but
+only in the case of some particularly pushing dealer.”
+
+“And Mr. Bender, to do him justice, isn’t a particularly pushing
+dealer?”
+
+“No,” Lady Grace judiciously returned; “I think he’s not a dealer at
+all, but just what you a moment ago spoke of yourself as being.”
+
+He gave a glance at his possibly wild recent past. “A fond true lover?”
+
+“As we _all_ were in our lucky time--when we rum-aged Italy and Spain.”
+
+He appeared to recognise this complication--of Bender’s voracious
+integrity; but only to push it away. “Well, I don’t know whether the
+best lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers--but I feel to-day that
+they’re the best keepers.”
+
+The breath of his emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl’s
+dimmer fire. “It’s as if it were suddenly in the air that you’ve brought
+us some light or some help--that you may do something really good for
+us.”
+
+“Do you mean ‘mark down,’ as they say at the shops, all your greatest
+claims?”
+
+His chord of sensibility had trembled all gratefully into derision, and
+not to seem to swagger he had put his possible virtue at its lowest.
+This she beautifully showed that she beautifully saw. “I dare say that
+if you did even that we should have to take it from you.”
+
+“Then it may very well be,” he laughed back, “the reason why I feel,
+under my delightful, wonderful impression, a bit anxious and nervous and
+afraid.”
+
+“That shows,” she returned, “that you suspect us of horrors hiding from
+justice, and that your natural kindness yet shrinks from handing us
+over!”
+
+Well, clearly, she might put it as she liked--it all came back to his
+being more charmed. “Heaven knows I’ve wanted a chance at you, but what
+should you say if, having then at last just taken you in in your so
+apparent perfection, I should feel it the better part of valour simply
+to mount my ‘bike’ again and spin away?”
+
+“I should be sure that at the end of the avenue you’d turn right round
+and come back. You’d think again of Mr. Bender.”
+
+“Whom I don’t, however, you see--if he’s prowling off there--in the
+least want to meet.” Crimble made the point with gaiety. “I don’t
+know what I mightn’t do to him--and yet it’s not of my temptation to
+violence, after all, that I’m most afraid. It’s of the brutal mistake
+of one’s breaking--with one’s priggish, precious modernity and
+one’s possibly futile discriminations--into a _general_ situation or
+composition, as we say, so serene and sound and right. What should one
+do here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one’s breath and
+walk on tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell
+me, instinctively stay outside. I saw that all,” the young man went on
+with more weight in his ardour, “I saw it, while we talked in London,
+as your natural setting and your native air--and now ten minutes on the
+spot have made it sink into my spirit. You’re a case, all together, of
+enchanted harmony, of perfect equilibrium--there’s nothing to be done or
+said.”
+
+His friend listened to this eloquence with her eyes lowered, then
+raising them to meet, with a vague insistence, his own; after which
+something she had seen there appeared to determine in her another
+motion. She indicated the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady
+Sandgate’s report, rapidly studied and denounced. “For what do you take
+that little picture?”
+
+Hugh Crimble went over and looked. “Why, don’t you know? It’s a jolly
+little Vandermeer of Delft.”
+
+“It’s not a base imitation?”
+
+He looked again, but appeared at a loss. “An imitation of Vandermeer?”
+
+“Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp.”
+
+It made the young man ring out: “Then Mr. Bender’s doubly dangerous!”
+
+“Singly is enough!” Lady Grace laughed. “But you see you _have_ to
+speak.”
+
+“Oh, to _him_, rather, after that--if you’ll just take me to him.”
+
+“Yes then,” she said; but even while she spoke Lord John, who had
+returned, by the terrace, from his quarter of an hour passed with Lady
+Imber, was there practically between them; a fact that she had to notice
+for her other visitor, to whom she was hastily reduced to naming him.
+
+His lordship eagerly made the most of this tribute of her attention,
+which had reached his ear; he treated it--her “Oh Lord John!”--as a
+direct greeting. “Ah Lady Grace! I came back particularly to find you.”
+
+She could but explain her predicament. “I was taking Mr. Crimble to see
+the pictures.” And then more pointedly, as her manner had been virtually
+an introduction of that gentleman, an introduction which Lord John’s
+mere noncommittal stare was as little as possible a response to: “Mr.
+Crimble’s one of the quite new connoisseurs.”
+
+“Oh, I’m at the very lowest round of the ladder. But I aspire!” Hugh
+laughed.
+
+“You’ll mount!” said Lady Grace with friendly confidence.
+
+He took it again with gay deprecation. “Ah, if by that time there’s
+anything left here to mount _on!_”
+
+“Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won’t
+have been able to carry off.” To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a
+helpful spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had
+the air of wishing to preserve his detachment: “It’s to Lord John that
+we owe Mr. Bender’s acquaintance.”
+
+Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. “Then do you
+happen to know, sir, what your friend means to _do_ with his spoil?”
+
+The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a
+commercially calculating or interested one. “Oh, not sell it again.”
+
+“Then ship it to New York?” the inquirer pursued, defining himself
+somehow as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.
+
+That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed
+relish for being able to displease Lady Grace’s odd guest by large
+assent. “As fast as ever he can--and you can land things there _now_,
+can’t you? in three or four days.”
+
+“I dare say. But can’t he be induced to have a little mercy?” Hugh
+sturdily pursued.
+
+Lord John pushed out his lips. “A ‘little’? How much do you want?”
+
+“Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand.”
+
+“I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender’s hand than you can empty
+his purse.”
+
+“Ah, the Despoilers!” said Crimble with strong expression. “But it’s
+_we_,” he added, “who are base.”
+
+“‘Base’?”--and Lord John’s surprise was apparently genuine.
+
+“To want only to ‘do business,’ I mean, with our treasures, with our
+glories.”
+
+Hugh’s words exhaled such a sense of peril as to draw at once Lady
+Grace. “Ah, but if we’re above that _here_, as you know------!”
+
+He stood smilingly corrected and contrite. “Of course I know--but you
+must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all,
+won’t you? the Moretto of Brescia.”
+
+“You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?”
+
+“Why, didn’t you tell me yourself?” It went on between them for the
+moment quite as if there had been no Lord John.
+
+“Probably, yes,” she recalled; “so how I must have swaggered!” After
+which she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of
+urgency. “Will you also come?”
+
+He confessed to a difficulty--which his whole face begged her also to
+take account of. “I hoped you’d be at leisure--for something I’ve so at
+heart!”
+
+This had its effect; she took a rapid decision and turned persuasively
+to Crimble--for whom, in like manner, there must have been something in
+_her_ face. “Let Mr. Bender himself then show you. And there are things
+in the library too.”
+
+“Oh yes, there are things in the library.” Lord John, happy in his
+gained advantage and addressing Hugh from the strong ground of an
+initiation already complete, quite sped him on the way.
+
+Hugh clearly made no attempt to veil the penetration with which he was
+moved to look from one of these counsellors to the other, though with a
+ready “Thank-you!” for Lady Grace he the next instant started in pursuit
+of Mr. Bender.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+“Your friend seems remarkably hot!” Lord John remarked to his young
+hostess as soon as they had been left together.
+
+“He has cycled twenty miles. And indeed,” she smiled, “he does appear to
+care for what he cares for!”
+
+Her companion then, during a moment’s silence, might have been noting
+the emphasis of her assent. “Have you known him long?”
+
+“No--not long.”
+
+“Nor seen him often?”
+
+“Only once--till now.”
+
+“Oh!” said Lord John with another pause. But he soon proceeded. “Let us
+leave him then to cool! I haven’t cycled twenty miles, but I’ve motored
+forty very much in the hope of _this_, Lady Grace--the chance of being
+able to assure you that I too care very much for what I care for.” To
+which he added on an easier note, as to carry off a slight awkwardness
+while she only waited: “You certainly mustn’t let yourself--between us
+all--be worked to death.”
+
+“Oh, such days as this--I” She made light enough of her burden.
+
+“They don’t come often to _me_ at least, Lady Grace! I hadn’t grasped
+in advance the scale of your fête,” he went on; “but since I’ve the
+great luck to find you alone--!” He paused for breath, however, before
+the full sequence.
+
+She helped him out as through common kindness, but it was a trifle
+colourless. “Alone or in company, Lord John, I’m always very glad to see
+you.”
+
+“Then that assurance helps me to wonder if you don’t perhaps gently
+guess what it is I want to say.” This time indeed she left him to
+his wonder, so that he had to support himself. “I’ve tried, all
+considerately--these three months--to let you see for yourself how
+I feel. I feel very strongly, Lady Grace; so that at last”--and his
+impatient sincerity took after another instant the jump--“well, I
+regularly worship you. You’re my absolute ideal. I think of you the
+whole time.”
+
+She measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of pretty
+ribbon. “Are you sure you _know_ me enough?”
+
+“I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!” Nothing now at least
+could have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistake
+showed in her smile he followed it up. “Isn’t what you rather mean that
+you haven’t cared sufficiently to know _me?_ If so, that can be little
+by little mended, Lady Grace.” He was in fact altogether gallant about
+it. “I’m aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but I
+defy you to find a limit to my possible devotion.”
+
+She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. “I believe you’d be
+very good to me.”
+
+“Well, isn’t _that_ something to start with?”--he fairly pounced on it.
+“I’ll do any blest thing in life you like, I’ll accept any condition you
+impose, if you’ll only tell me you see your way.”
+
+“Shouldn’t I have a little more first to see yours?” she asked. “When
+you say you’ll do anything in life I like, isn’t there anything you
+yourself want strongly enough to do?”
+
+He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. “Anything that
+will make money, you mean?”
+
+“Make money or make reputation--or even just make the time pass.”
+
+“Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?” If that was her
+meaning he could show after an instant that he didn’t fear it. “Well,
+your father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me to
+understand that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I’ve
+noticed, as you doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs a
+fellow----!”
+
+He left the obvious moral for her to take up--which she did, but all
+interrogatively. “The fellow at once comes in for something awfully
+good?”
+
+“I don’t in the least mind your laughing at me,” Lord John returned,
+“for when I put him the question of the lift he’d give me by speaking
+to you first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty in
+which he leaves you, and yet which doesn’t come--take my word!” said the
+young man sagely--“from his being at all indifferent.”
+
+“No,” she answered--“father isn’t indifferent. But father’s ‘great’”
+
+“Great indeed!”--her friend took it as with full comprehension. This
+appeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought.
+“Too great for _you?_”
+
+“Well, he makes me feel--even as his daughter--my extreme comparative
+smallness.”
+
+It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant “He’s a _grand
+seigneur_, and a serious one--that’s what he is: the very type and model
+of it, down to the ground. So you can imagine,” the young man said,
+“what he makes me feel--most of all when he’s so awfully good-natured
+to me. His being as ‘great’ as you say and yet backing me--such as I
+am!--doesn’t _that_ strike you as a good note for me, the best you could
+possibly require? For he really _would_ like what I propose to you.”
+
+She might have been noting, while she thought, that he had risen to
+ingenuity, to fineness, on the wings of his argument; under the effect
+of which her reply had the air of a concession. “Yes--he would like it.”
+
+“Then he _has_ spoken to you?” her suitor eagerly asked.
+
+“He hasn’t needed--he has ways of letting one know.”
+
+“Yes, yes, he has ways; all his own--like everything else he has. He’s
+wonderful.”
+
+She fully agreed. “He’s wonderful.”
+
+The tone of it appeared somehow to shorten at once for Lord John the
+rest of his approach to a conclusion. “So you do see your way?”
+
+“Ah--!” she said with a quick sad shrinkage.
+
+“I mean,” her visitor hastened to explain, “if he does put it to you as
+the very best idea he has for you. When he does that--as I believe him
+ready to do--will you really and fairly listen to him? I’m certain,
+honestly, that when you know me better--!” His confidence in short
+donned a bravery.
+
+“I’ve been feeling this quarter of an hour,” the girl returned, “that I
+do know you better.”
+
+“Then isn’t that all I want?--unless indeed I ought perhaps to ask
+rather if it isn’t all _you_ do! At any rate,” said Lord John, “I may
+see you again here?”
+
+She waited a moment. “You must have patience with me.”
+
+“I _am_ having it But _after_ your father’s appeal.”
+
+“Well,” she said, “that must come first.”
+
+“Then you won’t dodge it?”
+
+She looked at him straight “I don’t dodge, Lord John.”
+
+He admired the manner of it “You look awfully handsome as you say
+so--and you see what _that_ does to me.” As to attentuate a little the
+freedom of which he went on: “May I fondly hope that if Lady Imber too
+should wish to put in another word for me----?”
+
+“Will I listen to her?”--it brought Lady Grace straight down. “No, Lord
+John, let me tell you at once that I’ll do nothing of the sort Kitty’s
+quite another affair, and I never listen to her a bit more than I can
+help.”
+
+Lord John appeared to feel, on this, that he mustn’t too easily, in
+honour, abandon a person who had presented herself to him as an ally.
+“Ah, you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself--in his
+looser moments!--takes pleasure in what she says.”
+
+Our young woman’s eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, had
+no mercy for its extreme feebleness. “If you mean that she’s the most
+reckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as when
+she’s at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out her
+interest, she has learnt to ‘get round’ him till he only sees through
+her eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you
+think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it’s not on
+the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his
+youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.”
+
+Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering
+object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an
+absolutely boundless confidence--”
+
+“In any one in the world but himself?”--she had taken him straight up.
+“He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he
+likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because
+you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!”
+
+“You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he
+isn’t?”
+
+Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so
+with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.”
+
+Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.”
+
+“I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl
+undisguisedly smiled.
+
+“Then perhaps I oughtn’t!”--he glowed with the light of contrition.
+
+“Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement.
+
+“You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired.
+“I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good
+faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what
+it may be!”
+
+The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet.
+“You’re very good to say so!”
+
+If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that
+they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of
+a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to
+them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another
+question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he
+thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?”
+
+Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the
+person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell
+me, father, how good you think him.”
+
+“‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly,
+but looking from one of them to the other.
+
+“I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.”
+
+“Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go
+back and deal with those overwhelming children.”
+
+“Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!”--the girl put it with some
+point.
+
+“If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he
+replied--“from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred
+painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only
+for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the
+large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his
+back. The bucket, under the stream--”
+
+“Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested.
+
+“Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not
+unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord
+Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.”
+
+His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work
+people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.”
+
+“The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To
+which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of
+harshness, “Go!”
+
+It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with
+a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and
+resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared.
+
+“The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord
+John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just
+slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two
+were left together.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the
+impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want
+to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the
+matter with her?”
+
+Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.”
+
+“And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?”
+
+“A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have
+invited.”
+
+“Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded.
+
+“Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.”
+
+“Oh!”--it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a
+day.”
+
+His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told
+you?”
+
+“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly
+preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you
+know the freedom I allow her.”
+
+His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by
+it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light
+of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.
+
+Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself
+far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at
+this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the
+time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your
+own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”
+
+“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken
+care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the
+least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have
+failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that,
+seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very
+pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,
+“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if
+I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without
+abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be
+so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her
+yourself.”
+
+“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign,
+confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet
+with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was
+never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in
+from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown;
+but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed,
+of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required.
+His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all
+respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless,
+almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed
+things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and
+his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this
+rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of
+relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of
+displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with
+himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,
+“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the
+formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in
+him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small
+wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance
+of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages,
+flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective,
+a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that
+might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion,
+you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any
+opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was
+that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if
+it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of
+fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline,
+of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of
+an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought
+line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might
+somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal
+privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his
+suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding
+paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the
+scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the
+thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought
+of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives.
+Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last
+immediate question on his hands.
+
+“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has
+meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand,
+of the importance of our own time.”
+
+Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for
+the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for
+interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to
+strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his
+familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the
+work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”
+
+“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not
+least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no
+prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went
+on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine
+old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on
+the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”--the
+younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--“what she
+put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight
+in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up
+practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean,
+what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather
+decent.”
+
+Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course
+rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again
+on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the
+ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took
+himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges
+her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other
+trifles for which I naturally provide.”
+
+Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet
+but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not
+only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most
+flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but
+her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over
+and above----”
+
+“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”--Lord Theign
+reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course
+we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be
+discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so
+little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive,
+that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family,
+or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just
+staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed
+you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve
+thousand; with the condition--”
+
+Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the
+equivalent on Lady Grace.”
+
+“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”
+
+“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace
+herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”
+
+“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient
+time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”
+
+Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his
+friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely
+you can have no difficulty whatever--!”
+
+“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to
+let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have
+_liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a
+matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”
+
+“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly
+indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will
+only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must
+feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady
+Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she
+has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”
+
+“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”--Lord Theign scarce
+glowed with credulity.
+
+But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly
+likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such
+things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”
+
+“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what
+does she want more?”
+
+“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree,
+you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my
+fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t
+mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em:
+there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t
+touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady
+Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”
+
+“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe
+you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest
+spirit.
+
+It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now
+and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”
+
+This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold
+that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your
+job?”
+
+“That’s the conviction I entertain.”
+
+Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that
+still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of
+the least use for me to fumble.”
+
+“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment
+of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught
+the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and
+what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back
+from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall,
+exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve
+had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining
+you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this
+assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home,
+Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood
+good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind
+permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though
+if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any
+amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive
+hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with
+eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of
+Lord John.
+
+The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at
+all of mine, Mr. Bender.”
+
+“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope
+they’re looking after him.”
+
+“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and
+were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,
+“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”
+
+This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John
+unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”
+
+Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more
+and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”--the
+proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--“in that Moretto.”
+ And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take
+it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir
+Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it
+didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to
+enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_
+yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you
+prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?”
+
+Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few
+portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to
+you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a
+proposition would leave me intensely cold.”
+
+Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I
+_envy_ you!”
+
+“I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I
+envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to
+face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture
+of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light
+on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some
+experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.”
+
+Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended
+no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less
+evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to
+poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added,
+“I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we
+are,” he blandly smiled.
+
+His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John.
+“‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple
+of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop
+off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age,
+they so much enjoy.”
+
+Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then
+if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the
+ancestors bought?”
+
+“Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord
+Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?”
+
+“Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were
+my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand.
+I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you
+kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith.
+“Well, I guess I can wait!”
+
+This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from
+which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and
+more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s
+bound to _have_ something!”
+
+It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his
+friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?”
+
+“Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted.
+
+It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an
+interest, Lord John?”
+
+This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
+referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as
+if I have an interest?”
+
+Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and
+then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow,
+you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed--“I mean at Mr.
+Bender’s!”
+
+“Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but
+always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything--“go ahead, but
+don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist
+in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact
+been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some
+peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the
+germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops
+independently of all encouragement.”
+
+Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
+“He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!”
+
+Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
+the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
+toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way
+to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after
+doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much
+for you!”
+
+“That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been
+enough for _you!_”
+
+“I risk it, at any rate,” Lord John went on--“I put you, Bender, the
+question of whether you wouldn’t Move,’ as you say, to acquire that
+Moretto.”
+
+Mr. Bender’s large face had a commensurate gaze. “As I say? I haven’t
+said anything of the sort!”
+
+“But you do ‘love’ you know,” Lord John slightly overgrimaced.
+
+“I don’t when I don’t want to. I’m different from most people--I can
+love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto,” Mr. Bender
+continued, “is that it ain’t what I’m after.”
+
+His “after” had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack
+on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
+John’s speaking again across to their host. “The worst he can do for me,
+you see, is to refuse it.”
+
+Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling
+about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had
+but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: “It’s the very first time
+in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or
+anything else in it, has been offered----!”
+
+It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn’t dropped Mr. Bender
+mightn’t have been markedly impressed. “Then it must be the very first
+time such an offer has failed.”
+
+“Oh, it isn’t that we in the least press it!” Lord Theign quite
+naturally laughed.
+
+“Ah, I beg your pardon--I press it very hard!” And Lord John, as taking
+from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far
+as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion’s native
+form. “You don’t mean to say you don’t feel the interest of that
+Moretto?”
+
+Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. “Well, if you had
+seen me up on that chair you’d have thought I did.”
+
+“Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed.”
+
+“I stepped down quite impressed with that young man.”
+
+“Mr. Crimble?”--it came after an instant to Lord John. “With _his_
+opinion, really? Then I hope he’s aware of the picture’s value.”
+
+“You had better ask him,” Mr. Bender observed.
+
+“Oh, we don’t depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!” Lord John returned.
+
+Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. “Are you aware of the value
+yourself?”
+
+His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their
+entertainer. “Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?”
+
+Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared,
+a bit extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of
+hovering aloof.
+
+“That question needn’t trouble us--when I see how much Mr. Bender
+himself knows about it.”
+
+“Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at.” And
+then as the others waited, “Ten thousand,” said Mr. Bender.
+
+“Ten thousand?” The owner of the work showed no emotion.
+
+“Well,” said Lord John again in Mr. Bender’s style, “what’s the matter
+with ten thousand?”
+
+The subject of his gay tribute considered. “There’s nothing the matter
+with ten thousand.”
+
+“Then,” Lord Theign asked, “is there anything the matter with the
+picture?”
+
+“Yes, sir--I guess there is.”
+
+It gave an upward push to his lordship’s eyebrows. “But what in the
+world----?”
+
+“Well, that’s just the question!”
+
+The eyebrows continued to rise. “Does he pretend there’s a question of
+whether it _is_ a Moretto?”
+
+“That’s what he was up there trying to find out.”
+
+“But if the value’s, according to himself, ten thousand----?”
+
+“Why, of course,” said Mr. Bender, “it’s a fine work anyway.”
+
+“Then,” Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, “what’s the matter with
+_you_, Mr. Bender?”
+
+That gentleman was perfectly clear. “The matter with me, Lord Theign, is
+that I’ve no use for a ten thousand picture.”
+
+“‘No use?’”--the expression had an oddity. “But what’s it your idea to
+do with such things?”
+
+“I mean,” Mr. Bender explained, “that a picture of that rank is not what
+I’m after.”
+
+“The figure,” said his noble host--speaking thus, under pressure,
+commercially--“is beyond what you see your way to?”
+
+But Lord John had jumped at the truth. “The matter with Mr. Bender is
+that he sees his way much further.”
+
+“Further?” their companion echoed.
+
+“The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions.”
+
+Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. “Well, there would be no
+difficulty about _that_, I think!”
+
+“Ah,” said his guest, “you know the basis, sir, on which I’m ready to
+pay.”
+
+“On the basis then of the Sir Joshua,” Lord John inquired, “how far
+would you go?”
+
+Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety
+by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. “Well, I’d
+go all the way.”
+
+“He wants, you see,” Lord John elucidated, “an _ideally_ expensive
+thing.”
+
+Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant
+spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. “Then why
+shouldn’t I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?”
+
+“Because you can’t do violence to _that_ master’s natural modesty,” Mr.
+Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at
+this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once
+supplied a further light. “I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell
+you.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Hugh Crimble had come back from his voyage of discovery, and it was
+visible as he stood there flushed and quite radiant that he had caught
+in his approach Lord Theign’s last inquiry and Mr. Bender’s reply to it.
+You would have imputed to him on the spot the lively possession of a new
+idea, the sustaining sense of a message important enough to justify his
+irruption. He looked from one to the other of the three men, scattered
+a little by the sight of him, but attached eyes of recognition then
+to Lord Theign’s, whom he remained an instant longer communicatively
+smiling at. After which, as you might have gathered, he all confidently
+plunged, taking up the talk where the others had left it. “I should say,
+Lord Theign, if you’ll allow me, in regard to what you appear to have
+been discussing, that it depends a good deal on just that question--of
+what your Moretto, at any rate, may be presumed or proved to ‘be.’ Let
+me thank you,” he cheerfully went on, “for your kind leave to go over
+your treasures.”
+
+The personage he so addressed was, as we know, nothing if not generally
+affable; yet if that was just then apparent it was through a shade of
+coolness for the slightly heated familiarity of so plain, or at least
+so free, a young man in eye-glasses, now for the first time definitely
+apprehended. “Oh, I’ve scarcely ‘treasures’--but I’ve some things of
+interest.”
+
+Hugh, however, entering the opulent circle, as it were, clearly took
+account of no breath of a chill. “I think possible, my lord, that
+you’ve a great treasure--if you’ve really so high a rarity as a splendid
+Manto-vano.”
+
+“A ‘Mantovano’?” You wouldn’t have been sure that his lordship didn’t
+pronounce the word for the first time in his life.
+
+“There have been supposed to be only _seven_ real examples about the
+world; so that if by an extraordinary chance you find yourself the
+possessor of a magnificent eighth----”
+
+But Lord John had already broken in. “Why, there you _are_, Mr. Bender!”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Bender, with whom I’ve made acquaintance,” Hugh returned, “was
+there as it began to work in me--”
+
+“That your Moretto, Lord Theign”--Mr. Bender took their informant
+up--“isn’t, after all, a Moretto at all.” And he continued amusedly to
+Hugh: “It began to work in you, sir, like very strong drink!”
+
+“Do I understand you to suggest,” Lord Theign asked of the startling
+young man, “that my precious picture isn’t genuine?”
+
+Well, Hugh knew exactly what he suggested. “As a picture, Lord Theign,
+as a great portrait, one of the most genuine things in Europe. But it
+strikes me as probable that from far back--for reasons!--there has
+been a wrong attribution; that the work has been, in other words,
+traditionally, obstinately miscalled. It has passed for a Moretto, and
+at first I quite took it for one; but I suddenly, as I looked and looked
+and saw and saw, began to doubt, and now I know _why_ I doubted.”
+
+Lord Theign had during this speech kept his eyes on the ground; but he
+raised them to Mr. Crimble’s almost palpitating presence for the remark:
+“I’m bound to say that I hope you’ve some very good grounds!”
+
+“I’ve three or four, Lord Theign; they seem to me of the best--as yet.
+They made me wonder and wonder--and then light splendidly broke.”
+
+His lordship didn’t stint his attention. “Reflected, you mean, from
+_other_ Mantovanos--that I don’t know?”
+
+“I mean from those I know myself,” said Hugh; “and I mean from fine
+analogies with one in particular.”
+
+“Analogies that in all these years, these centuries, have so remarkably
+not been noticed?”
+
+“Well,” Hugh competently explained, “they’re a sort of thing the very
+sense of, the value and meaning of, are a highly modern--in fact a quite
+recent growth.”
+
+Lord John at this professed with cordiality that he at least quite
+understood. “Oh, we know a lot more about our pictures and things than
+ever our ancestors did!”
+
+“Well, I guess it’s enough for _me_,” Mr. Bender contributed, “that your
+ancestors knew enough to get ‘em!”
+
+“Ah, that doesn’t go so far,” cried Hugh, “unless we ourselves know
+enough to keep ‘em!”
+
+The words appeared to quicken in a manner Lord Theign’s view of the
+speaker. “Were _your_ ancestors, Mr. Crimble, great collectors?”
+
+Arrested, it might be, in his general assurance, Hugh wondered and
+smiled. “Mine--collectors? Oh, I’m afraid I haven’t any--to speak of.
+Only it has seemed to me for a long time,” he added, “that on that head
+we should all feel together.”
+
+Lord Theign looked for a moment as if these were rather large
+presumptions; then he put them in their place a little curtly. “It’s one
+thing to keep our possessions for ourselves--it’s another to keep them
+for other people.”
+
+“Well,” Hugh good-humouredly returned, “I’m perhaps not so absolutely
+sure of myself, if you press me, as that I sha’n’t be glad of a higher
+and wiser opinion--I mean than my own. It would be awfully interesting,
+if you’ll allow me to say so, to have the judgment of one or two of the
+great men.”
+
+“You’re not yourself, Mr. Crimble, one of the great men?” his host asked
+with tempered irony.
+
+“Well, I guess he’s going to be, anyhow,” Mr. Bender cordially struck
+in; “and this remarkable exhibition of intelligence may just let him
+loose on the world, mayn’t it?”
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Bender!”--and Hugh obviously tried to look neither
+elated nor snubbed. “I’ve too much still to learn, but I’m learning
+every day, and I shall have learnt immensely this afternoon.”
+
+“Pretty well at my expense, however,” Lord Theign laughed, “if you
+demolish a name we’ve held for generations so dear.”
+
+“You may have held the name dear, my lord,” his young critic answered;
+“but my whole point is that, if I’m right, you’ve held the picture
+itself cheap.”
+
+“Because a Mantovano,” said Lord John, “is so much greater a value?”
+
+Hugh met his eyes a moment “Are you talking of values pecuniary?”
+
+“What values are _not_ pecuniary?”
+
+Hugh might, during his hesitation, have been imagined to stand off a
+little from the question. “Well, some things have in a higher degree
+that one, and some have the associational or the factitious, and some
+the clear artistic.”
+
+“And some,” Mr. Bender opined, “have them _all_--in the highest degree.
+But what you mean,” he went on, “is that a Mantovano would come higher
+under the hammer than a Moretto?”
+
+“Why, sir,” the young man returned, “there aren’t any, as I’ve just
+stated, _to_ ‘come.’ I account--or I easily can--for every one of the
+very small number.”
+
+“Then do you consider that you account for this one?”
+
+“I believe I shall if you’ll give me time.”
+
+“Oh, time!” Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. “But we’ll give you all we’ve
+got--only I guess it isn’t much.” And he appeared freely to invite their
+companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however, they
+watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had
+gone on: “How much higher--if your idea is correct about it--would Lord
+Theign’s picture come?”
+
+Hugh turned to that nobleman. “Does Mr. Bender mean come to _him_, my
+lord?”
+
+Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done
+yet at his other invader. “I don’t know _what_ Mr. Bender means!” With
+which he turned off.
+
+“Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one!
+But how _much_ higher?” the American continued to Hugh.
+
+“How much higher to _you?_”
+
+“Oh, I can size _that_. How much higher as a Mantovano?”
+
+Unmistakably--for us at least--our young man was gaining time; he had
+the instinct of circumspection and delay. “To any one?”
+
+“To any one.”
+
+“Than as a Moretto?” Hugh continued.
+
+It even acted on Lord John’s nerves. “That’s what we’re talking
+about--really!”
+
+But Hugh still took his ease; as if, with his eyes first on Bender
+and then on Lord Theign, whose back was practically presented, he were
+covertly studying signs. “Well,” he presently said, “in view of the very
+great interest combined with the very great rarity, more than--ah more
+than can be estimated off-hand.”
+
+It made Lord Theign turn round. “But a fine Moretto has a very great
+rarity and a very great interest.”
+
+“Yes--but not on the whole the same amount of either.”
+
+“No, not on the whole the same amount of either!”--Mr. Bender
+judiciously echoed it. “But how,” he freely pursued, “are you going to
+find out?”
+
+“Have I your permission, Lord Theign,” Hugh brightly asked, “to attempt
+to find out?”
+
+The question produced on his lordship’s part a visible, a natural
+anxiety. “What would it be your idea then to _do_ with my property?”
+
+“Nothing at all here--it could all be done, I think, at Verona. What
+besets, what quite haunts me,” Hugh explained, “is the vivid image of a
+Mantovano--one of the glories of the short list--in a private collection
+in that place. The conviction grows in me that the two portraits must
+be of the same original. In fact I’ll bet my head,” the young man quite
+ardently wound up, “that the wonderful subject of the Verona picture, a
+very great person clearly, is none other than the very great person of
+yours.”
+
+Lord Theign had listened with interest. “Mayn’t he be that and yet from
+another hand?”
+
+“It isn’t another hand”--oh Hugh was quite positive. “It’s the hand of
+the very same painter.”
+
+“How can you prove it’s the same?”
+
+“Only by the most intimate internal evidence, I admit--and evidence that
+of course has to be estimated.”
+
+“Then who,” Lord Theign asked, “is to estimate it?”
+
+“Well,”--Hugh was all ready--“will you let Pap-pendick, one of the first
+authorities in Europe, a good friend of mine, in fact more or less my
+master, and who is generally to be found at Brussels? I happen to know
+he knows your picture--he once spoke to me of it; and he’ll go and look
+again at the Verona one, he’ll go and judge our issue, if I apply to
+him, in the light of certain new tips that I shall be able to give him.”
+
+Lord Theign appeared to wonder. “If you ‘apply’ to him?”
+
+“Like a shot, I believe, if I ask it of him--as a service.”
+
+“A service to _you?_ He’ll be very obliging,” his lordship smiled.
+
+“Well, I’ve obliged _him!_” Hugh readily retorted.
+
+“The obligation will be to we”--Lord Theign spoke more formally.
+
+“Well, the satisfaction,” said Hugh, “will be to all of us. The things
+Pappendick has seen he intensely, ineffaceably keeps in mind, to every
+detail; so that he’ll tell me--as no one else really can--if the Verona
+man is _your_ man.”
+
+“But then,” asked Mr. Bender, “we’ve got to believe anyway what he
+says?”
+
+“The market,” said Lord John with emphasis, “would have to believe
+it--that’s the point.”
+
+“Oh,” Hugh returned lightly, “the market will have nothing to do with
+it, I hope; but I think you’ll feel when he has spoken that you really
+know where you are.”
+
+Mr. Bender couldn’t doubt of that. “Oh, if he gives us a bigger thing we
+won’t complain. Only, how long will it take him to get there? I want him
+to start right away.”
+
+“Well, as I’m sure he’ll be deeply interested----”
+
+“We _may_”--Mr. Bender took it straight up--“get news next week?”
+
+Hugh addressed his reply to Lord Theign; it was already a little too
+much as if he and the American between them were snatching the case from
+that possessor’s hands. “The day I hear from Pappendick you shall have a
+full report. And,” he conscientiously added, “if I’m proved to have been
+unfortunately wrong----!”
+
+His lordship easily pointed the moral. “You’ll have caused me some
+inconvenience.”
+
+“Of course I shall,” the young man unreservedly agreed--“like a wanton
+meddling ass!” His candour, his freedom had decidedly a note of their
+own. “But my conviction, after those moments with your picture, was too
+strong for me not to speak--and, since you allow it, I face the danger
+and risk the test.”
+
+“I allow it of course in the form of business.” This produced in Hugh a
+certain blankness. “‘Business’?” “If I consent to the inquiry I pay for
+the inquiry.” Hugh demurred. “Even if I turn out mistaken?” “You make me
+in any event your proper charge.” The young man thought again, and then
+as for vague accommodation: “Oh, my charge won’t be high!”
+
+“Ah,” Mr. Bender protested, “it ought to be handsome if the thing’s
+marked _up_!” After which he looked at his watch. “But I guess I’ve got
+to go, Lord Theign, though your lovely old Duchess--for it’s to _her_
+I’ve lost my heart--does cry out for me again.”
+
+“You’ll find her then still there,” Lord John observed with emphasis,
+but with his eyes for the time on Lord Theign; “and if you want another
+look at her I’ll presently come and take one too.”
+
+“I’ll order your car to the garden-front,” Lord Theign added to this;
+“you’ll reach it from the saloon, but I’ll see you again first.”
+
+Mr. Bender glared as with the round full force of his pair of motor
+lamps. “Well, if you’re ready to talk about anything, I am. Good-bye,
+Mr. Crimble.”
+
+“Good-bye, Mr. Bender.” But Hugh, addressing their host while his
+fellow-guest returned to the saloon, broke into the familiarity of
+confidence. “As if you _could_ be ready to ‘talk’!”
+
+This produced on the part of the others present a mute exchange that
+could only have denoted surprise at all the irrepressible young outsider
+thus projected upon them took for granted. “I’ve an idea,” said Lord
+John to his friend, “that you’re quite ready to talk with _me_.”
+
+Hugh then, with his appetite so richly quickened, could but rejoice.
+“Lady Grace spoke to me of things in the library.”
+
+“You’ll find it _that_ way”--Lord Theign gave the indication.
+
+“Thanks,” said Hugh elatedly, and hastened away.
+
+Lord John, when he had gone, found relief in a quick comment. “Very
+sharp, no doubt--but he wants taking down.”
+
+The master of Dedborough wouldn’t have put it so crudely, but the young
+expert did bring certain things home. “The people my daughters, in the
+exercise of a wild freedom, do pick up----!”
+
+“Well, don’t you see that all you’ve got to do--on the question we’re
+dealing with--is to claim your very own wild freedom? Surely I’m right
+in feeling you,” Lord John further remarked, “to have jumped at once
+to my idea that Bender is heaven-sent--and at what they call the
+psychologic moment, don’t they?--to point that moral. Why look anywhere
+else for a sum of money that--smaller or greater--you can find with
+perfect ease in that extraordinarily bulging pocket?”
+
+Lord Theign, slowly pacing the hall again, threw up his hands. “Ah, with
+‘perfect ease’ can scarcely be said!”
+
+“Why not?--when he absolutely thrusts his dirty dollars down your
+throat.”
+
+“Oh, I’m not talking of ease to _him_,” Lord Theign returned--“I’m
+talking of ease to myself. I shall have to make a sacrifice.”
+
+“Why not then--for so great a convenience--gallantly make it?”
+
+“Ah, my dear chap, if you want me to sell my Sir Joshua----!”
+
+But the horror in the words said enough, and Lord John felt its chill.
+“I don’t make a point of that--God forbid! But there are other things to
+which the objection wouldn’t apply.”
+
+“You see how it applies--in the case of the Moret-to--for _him_. A mere
+Moretto,” said Lord Theign, “is too cheap--for a Yankee ‘on the spend.’”
+
+“Then the Mantovano wouldn’t be.”
+
+“It remains to be proved that it _is_ a Mantovano.”
+
+“Well,” said Lord John, “go into it.”
+
+“Hanged if I won’t!” his friend broke out after a moment. “It _would_
+suit me. I mean”--the explanation came after a brief intensity of
+thought--“the possible size of his cheque would.”
+
+“Oh,” said Lord John gaily, “I guess there’s no limit to the possible
+size of his cheque!”
+
+“Yes, it would suit me, it would suit me!” the elder man, standing
+there, audibly mused. But his air changed and a lighter question came
+up to him as he saw his daughter reappear at the door from the terrace.
+“Well, the infant horde?” he immediately put to her.
+
+Lady Grace came in, dutifully accounting for them. “They’ve marched
+off--in a huge procession.”
+
+“Thank goodness! And our friends?”
+
+“All playing tennis,” she said--“save those who are sitting it out.” To
+which she added, as to explain her return: “Mr. Crimble has gone?”
+
+Lord John took upon him to say. “He’s in the library, to which you
+addressed him--making discoveries.”
+
+“Not then, I hope,” she smiled, “to our disadvantage!”
+
+“To your very great honour and glory.” Lord John clearly valued the
+effect he might produce.
+
+“Your Moretto of Brescia--do you know what it really and spendidly
+is?” And then as the girl, in her surprise, but wondered: “A Mantovano,
+neither more nor less. Ever so much more swagger.”
+
+“A Mantovano?” Lady Grace echoed. “Why, how tremendously jolly!”
+
+Her father was struck. “Do you know the artist--of whom I had never
+heard?”
+
+“Yes, something of the little that _is_ known.” And she rejoiced as her
+knowledge came to her. “He’s a tremendous swell, because, great as he
+was, there are but seven proved examples----”
+
+“With this of yours,” Lord John broke in, “there are eight.”
+
+“Then why haven’t I known about him?” Lord Theign put it as if so many
+other people were guilty for this.
+
+His daughter was the first to plead for the vague body. “Why, I suppose
+in order that you should have exactly this pleasure, father.”
+
+“Oh, pleasures not desired are like acquaintances not sought--they
+rather bore one!” Lord Theign sighed. With which he moved away from her.
+
+Her eyes followed him an instant--then she smiled at their guest. “Is he
+bored at having the higher prize--if you’re sure it _is_ the higher?”
+
+“Mr. Crimble is sure--because if he isn’t,” Lord John added, “he’s a
+wretch.”
+
+“Well,” she returned, “as he’s certainly not a wretch it must be true.
+And fancy,” she exclaimed further, though as more particularly for
+herself, “our having suddenly incurred this immense debt to him!”
+
+“Oh, I shall pay Mr. Crimble!” said her father, who had turned round.
+
+The whole question appeared to have provoked in Lord John a rise of
+spirits and a flush of humour. “Don’t you let him stick it on.”
+
+His host, however, bethinking himself, checked him. “Go _you_ to Mr.
+Bender straight!”
+
+Lord John saw the point. “Yes--till he leaves. But I shall find you
+here, shan’t I?” he asked with all earnestness of Lady Grace.
+
+She had an hesitation, but after a look at her father she assented.
+“I’ll wait for you.”
+
+“Then _à tantôt!_” It made him show for happy as, waving his hand at
+her, he proceeded to seek Mr. Bender in presence of the object that most
+excited that gentleman’s appetite--to say nothing of the effect involved
+on Lord John’s own.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved--it might have been
+nervously--about the place a little, but soon broke ground. “He’ll have
+told you, I understand, that I’ve promised to speak to you for him. But
+I understand also that he has found something to say for himself.”
+
+“Yes, we talked--a while since,” the girl said. “At least _he_ did.”
+
+“Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace.”
+
+“Oh, he speaks very well--and I’ve never disliked him.”
+
+It pulled her father up. “Is that _all_--when I think so much of him?”
+
+She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone
+far; but she waited a little. “Do you think very, _very_ much?”
+
+“Surely I’ve made my good opinion clear to you!”
+
+Again she had a pause. “Oh yes, I’ve seen you like him and believe in
+him--and I’ve found him pleasant and clever.”
+
+“He has never had,” Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained,
+“what I call a real show.” But the character under discussion could
+after all be summed up without searching analysis. “I consider
+nevertheless that there’s plenty in him.”
+
+It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. “He strikes
+me as naturally quick and--well, nice. But I agree with you than he
+hasn’t had a chance.”
+
+“Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to
+one I dare say you’ll find your reward.”
+
+For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her
+companion’s manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped.
+Didn’t he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn’t
+his visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and
+indeed rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? “Do you
+desire it very particularly?” was, however, all she at last brought out.
+
+“I should like it exceedingly--if you act from conviction. Then of
+course only; but of one thing I’m myself convinced--of what he thinks of
+yourself and feels for you.”
+
+“Then would you mind my waiting a little?” she asked. “I mean to be
+absolutely sure of myself.” After which, on his delaying to agree, she
+added frankly, as to help her case: “Upon my word, father, I should like
+to do what would please you.”
+
+But it determined in him a sharper impatience. “Ah, what would please
+_me!_ Don’t put it off on ‘me’! Judge absolutely for yourself”--he
+slightly took himself up--“in the light of my having consented to do for
+him what I always _hate_ to do: deviate from my normal practice of never
+intermeddling. If I’ve deviated now you can judge. But to do so all
+round, of course, take--in reason!--your time.”
+
+“May I ask then,” she said, “for still a little more?”
+
+He looked for this, verily, as if it was not in reason. “You know,” he
+then returned, “what he’ll feel that a sign of.”
+
+“Well, I’ll tell him what I mean.”
+
+“Then I’ll send him to you.”
+
+He glanced at his watch and was going, but after a “Thanks, father,” she
+had stopped him. “There’s one thing more.” An embarrassment showed in
+her manner, but at the cost of some effect of earnest abruptness she
+surmounted it. “What does your American--Mr. Bender--want?”
+
+Lord Theign plainly felt the challenge. “‘My’ American? He’s none of
+mine!”
+
+“Well then Lord John’s.”
+
+“He’s none of his either--more, I mean, than any one else’s. He’s every
+one’s American, literally--to all appearance; and I’ve not to tell
+_you_, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people stalk
+in and out here.”
+
+“No, father--certainly,” she said. “You’re splendidly generous.”
+
+His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on
+that; but he added as if it were enough: “What the man must by this time
+want more than anything else is his car.”
+
+“Not then anything of ours?” she still insisted.
+
+“Of ‘ours’?” he echoed with a frown. “Are you afraid he has an eye to
+something of _yours?_”
+
+“Why, if we’ve a new treasure--which we certainly have if we possess
+a Mantovano--haven’t we all, even I, an immense interest in it?” And
+before he could answer, “Is _that_ exposed?” she asked.
+
+Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any
+illusion to the “exposure” of the objects they so solidly sheltered was
+obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a
+stroke both his own reassurance and his daughter’s. “How can there be a
+question of it when he only wants Sir Joshuas?”
+
+“He wants ours?” the girl gasped.
+
+“At absolutely any price.”
+
+“But you’re not,” she cried, “discussing it?”
+
+He hesitated as between chiding and contenting her--then he handsomely
+chose. “My dear child, for what do you take me?” With which he
+impatiently started, through the long and stately perspective, for the
+saloon.
+
+She sank into a chair when he had gone; she sat there some moments in a
+visible tension of thought, her hands clasped in her lap and her dropped
+eyes fixed and unperceiving; but she sprang up as Hugh Crimble, in
+search of her, again stood before her. He presented himself as with
+winged sandals.
+
+“What luck to find you! I must take my spin back.”
+
+“You’ve seen everything as you wished?”
+
+“Oh,” he smiled, “I’ve seen wonders.”
+
+She showed her pleasure. “Yes, we’ve got some things.”
+
+“So Mr. Bender says!” he laughed. “You’ve got five or six--”
+
+“Only five or six?” she cried in bright alarm.
+
+“‘Only’?” he continued to laugh. “Why, that’s enormous, five or six
+things of the first importance! But I think I ought to mention to you,”
+ he added, “a most barefaced ‘Rubens’ there in the library.”
+
+“It isn’t a Rubens?”
+
+“No more than I’m a Ruskin.”
+
+“Then you’ll brand us--expose us for it?”
+
+“No, I’ll let you off--I’ll be quiet if you’re good, if you go straight.
+I’ll only hold it _in terrorem_. One can’t be sure in these dreadful
+days--that’s always to remember; so that if you’re not good I’ll come
+down on you with it. But to balance against that threat,” he went on,
+“I’ve made the very grandest find. At least I believe I have!”
+
+She was all there for this news. “Of the Manto-vano--hidden in the other
+thing?”
+
+Hugh wondered--almost as if she had been before him. “You don’t mean to
+say _you’ve_ had the idea of that?”
+
+“No, but my father has told me.”
+
+“And is your father,” he eagerly asked, “really gratified?”
+
+With her conscious eyes on him--her eyes could clearly be very conscious
+about her father--she considered a moment. “He always prefers old
+associations and appearances to new; but I’m sure he’ll resign himself
+if you see your way to a certainty.”
+
+“Well, it will be a question of the weight of expert opinion that I
+shall invoke. But I’m not afraid,” he resolutely said, “and I shall
+make the thing, from its splendid rarity, the crown and flower of your
+glory.”
+
+Her serious face shone at him with a charmed gratitude. “It’s awfully
+beautiful then your having come to us so. It’s awfully beautiful your
+having brought us this way, in a flash--as dropping out of a chariot
+of fire--more light and what you apparently feel with myself as more
+honour.”
+
+“Ah, the beauty’s in your having yourself done it!” he returned. He
+gave way to the positive joy of it. “If I’ve brought the ‘light’ and the
+rest--that’s to say the very useful information--who in the world was it
+brought _me?_”
+
+She had a gesture of protest “You’d have come in some other way.”
+
+“I’m not so sure! I’m beastly shy--little as I may seem to show it: save
+in great causes, when I’m horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now
+at any rate I only know what _has_ been.” She turned off for it, moving
+away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for unrest;
+and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. “But does
+anything in it all,” he asked, “trouble you?”
+
+She faced about across the wider space, and there was a different note
+in what she brought out. “I don’t know what forces me so to _tell_ you
+things.”
+
+“‘Tell’ me?” he stared. “Why, you’ve told me nothing more monstrous than
+that I’ve been welcome!”
+
+“Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of
+our not ‘going straight’? When you said you’d expose our bad--or is it
+our false?--Rubens in the event of a certain danger.”
+
+“Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed”--he laughed again as with
+relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: “Why, to let
+anything--of your best!--ever leave Dedborough. By which I mean really
+of course leave the country.” She turned again on this, and something
+in her air made him wonder. “I hope you don’t feel there _is_ such a
+danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was unthinkable.”
+
+“Well, it _was_, to me, half an hour ago,” she said as she came nearer.
+“But if it has since come up?”
+
+“‘If’ it has! But _has_ it? In the form of that monster? What Mr. Bender
+wants is the great Duchess,” he recalled.
+
+“And my father won’t sell _her_? No, he won’t sell the great
+Duchess--there I feel safe. But he greatly needs a certain sum of
+money--or he thinks he does--and I’ve just had a talk with him.”
+
+“In which he has told you that?”
+
+“He has told me nothing,” Lady Grace said--“or else told me quite other
+things. But the more I think of them the more it comes to me that he
+feels urged or tempted--”
+
+“To despoil and denude these walls?” Hugh broke in, looking about in his
+sharper apprehension.
+
+“Yes, to satisfy, to save my sister. _Now_ do you think our state so
+ideal?” she asked--but without elation for her hint of triumph.
+
+He had no answer for this save “Ah, but you terribly interest me. May I
+ask what’s the matter with your sister?”
+
+Oh, she wanted to go on straight now! “The matter is--in the first
+place--that she’s too dazzlingly, dreadfully beautiful.”
+
+“More beautiful than you?” his sincerity easily risked.
+
+“Millions of times.” Sad, almost sombre, she hadn’t a shade of coquetry.
+“Kitty has debts--great heaped-up gaming debts.”
+
+“But to such amounts?”
+
+“Incredible amounts it appears. And mountains of others too. She throws
+herself all on our father.”
+
+“And he _has_ to pay them? There’s no one else?” Hugh asked.
+
+She waited as if he might answer himself, and then as he apparently
+didn’t, “He’s only afraid there _may_ be some else--that’s how she makes
+him do it,” she said. And “Now do you think,” she pursued, “that I don’t
+tell you things?”
+
+He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she
+told him. “Oh, oh, oh!” And then, in the great place, while as, just
+spent by the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he
+took them all in. “That’s the situation that, as you say, may force his
+hand.”
+
+“It absolutely, I feel, does force it.” And the renewal of her appeal
+brought her round. “Isn’t it too lovely?”
+
+His frank disgust answered. “It’s too damnable!”
+
+“And it’s you,” she quite terribly smiled, “who--by the ‘irony of
+fate’!--have given him help.”
+
+He smote his head in the light of it. “By the Mantovano?”
+
+“By the possible Mantovano--as a substitute for the impossible Sir
+Joshua. You’ve made him aware of a value.”
+
+“Ah, but the value’s to be fixed!”
+
+“Then Mr. Bender will fix it!”
+
+“Oh, but--as he himself would say--I’ll fix Mr. Bender!” Hugh declared.
+“And he won’t buy a pig in a poke.”
+
+This cleared the air while they looked at each other; yet she had
+already asked: “What in the world can you do, and how in the world can
+you do it?”
+
+Well, he was too excited for decision. “I don’t quite see now, but give
+me time.” And he took out his watch as already to measure it. “Oughtn’t
+I before I go to say a word to Lord Theign?”
+
+“Is it your idea to become a lion in his path?”
+
+“Well, say a cub--as that’s what I’m afraid he’ll call me! But I think I
+should speak to him.”
+
+She drew a conclusion momentarily dark. “He’ll have to learn in that
+case that I’ve told you of my fear.”
+
+“And is there any good reason why he shouldn’t?”
+
+She kept her eyes on him and the darkness seemed to clear. “No!” she at
+last replied, and, having gone to touch an electric bell, was with him
+again. “But I think I’m rather sorry for you.”
+
+“Does that represent a reason why I should be so for you?”
+
+For a little she said nothing; but after that: “None whatever!”
+
+“Then is the sister of whom you speak Lady Imber?”
+
+Lady Grace, at this, raised her hand in caution: the butler had arrived,
+with due gravity, in answer to her ring; to whom she made known her
+desire. “Please say to his lordship--in the saloon or wherever--that
+Mr. Crimble must go.” When Banks had departed, however, accepting the
+responsibility of this mission, she answered her friend’s question. “The
+sister of whom I speak is Lady Imber.”
+
+“She loses then so heavily at bridge?”
+
+“She loses more than she wins.”
+
+Hugh gazed as with interest at these oddities of the great. “And yet she
+still plays?”
+
+“What else, in her set, should she do?”
+
+This he was quite unable to say; but he could after a moment’s
+exhibition of the extent to which he was out of it put a question
+instead. “So _you’re_ not in her set?”
+
+“I’m not in her set.”
+
+“Then decidedly,” he said, “I don’t want to save her. I only want--”
+
+He was going on, but she broke in: “I know what you want!”
+
+He kept his eyes on her till he had made sure--and this deep exchange
+between them had a beauty. “So you’re now _with_ me?”
+
+“I’m now _with_ you!”
+
+“Then,” said Hugh, “shake hands on it”
+
+He offered her his hand, she took it, and their grasp became, as you
+would have seen in their fine young faces, a pledge in which they stood
+a minute locked. Lord Theign came upon them from the saloon in the midst
+of the process; on which they separated as with an air of its having
+consisted but of Hugh’s leave-taking. With some such form of mere
+civility, at any rate, he appeared, by the manner in which he addressed
+himself to Hugh, to have supposed them occupied.
+
+“I’m sorry my daughter can’t keep you; but I must at least thank you for
+your interesting view of my picture.”
+
+Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of
+this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with
+a sense of possibly awkward consequences: “May I--before you’re sure of
+your indebtedness--put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?” It
+sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous--as was in fact
+testified to by his lordship’s quick stiff stare, full of wonder at
+so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. “If I
+contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of
+the work you speak of, may I have from you an assurance that my success
+isn’t to serve as a basis for any peril--or possibility--of its leaving
+the country?”
+
+Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this,
+turned a shade pale. “You ask of me an ‘assurance’?”
+
+Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look
+of having counted the cost of his step. “I’m afraid I _must_, you see.”
+
+It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. “And
+pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?”
+
+“By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a
+service.”
+
+Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called
+spirit. “A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir--and
+with which you may take it from me that I’m already quite prepared to
+dispense.”
+
+“I’m sorry to appear indiscreet,” our young man returned; “I’m sorry to
+have upset you in any way. But I can’t overcome my anxiety--”
+
+Lord Theign took the words from his lips. “And you therefore invite
+me--at the end of half an hour in this house!--to account to you for my
+personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to
+your hands?”
+
+Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that
+stretched about him--the great loz-enged marble floor that might have
+figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to
+“stand.” “I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed
+not to have seized any chance to appeal to you.” Whatever difficulty he
+had had shyly to face didn’t exist for him now. “I entreat you to think
+again, to think _well_, before you deprive us of such a source of just
+envy.”
+
+“And you regard your entreaty as helped,” Lord Theign asked, “by the
+beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?” Then as his
+monitor, arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who,
+showing in her face all the pain of the business, stood off at the
+distance to which a woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to
+violence as precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having
+turned: “I ask you that not less than I should like to know whom you
+speak of as ‘deprived’ of property that happens--for reasons that I
+don’t suppose you also quarrel with!--to be mine.”
+
+“Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign,” Hugh said, “but I
+speak of _all_ of us--of all the people of England; who would deeply
+deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear
+you, I beseech you mercifully to consider.”
+
+“The interest they bear me?”--the master of Dedborough fairly bristled
+with wonder. “Pray how the devil do they show it?”
+
+“I think they show it in all sorts of ways”--and Hugh’s critical smile,
+at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner
+seeming to convey that he meant many things.
+
+“Understand then, please,” said Lord Theign with every inch of his
+authority, “that they’ll show it best by minding their own business
+while I very particularly mind mine.”
+
+“You simply do, in other words,” Hugh explicitly concluded, “what
+happens to be convenient to you.”
+
+“In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to _you!_
+So that I need no longer detain you,” Lord Theign added with the last
+dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
+
+The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while,
+unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the
+cycling-cap he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival.
+“I apologise, my lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your
+hospitality. But,” he went on with his uncommended cheer, “my interest
+in your picture remains.”
+
+Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere
+watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the
+first time. “And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and
+grows.”
+
+It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone,
+judged her contribution superfluous. “I’m happy to hear it, Grace--but
+yours is another affair.”
+
+“I think on the contrary that it’s quite the same one,” she
+returned--“since it’s on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to
+you what he has.” The resolution she had gathered while she awaited her
+chance sat in her charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter
+paternal glare. “I let him know that I supposed you to think of
+profiting by the importance of Mr. Bender’s visit.”
+
+“Then you might have spared, my dear, your--I suppose and hope
+well-meant--interpretation of my mind.” Lord Theign showed himself at
+this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without
+having been in the wrong. “Mr. Bender’s visit will terminate--as soon
+as he has released Lord John--without my having profited in the smallest
+particular.”
+
+Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. “It was
+Lady Grace’s anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her,
+that my idea about the Moretto would add to your power--well,” he pushed
+on not without awkwardness, “of ‘realising’ advantageously on such a
+prospective rise.”
+
+Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to
+Lady Grace. “Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any
+association with this gentleman’s ideas--whether about the Moretto or
+about anything else--his further application of them ceases from this
+moment to concern us.”
+
+The girl’s rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across
+their companion. “Will you make your inquiry for _me_ then?”
+
+The light again kindled in him. “With all the pleasure in life!” He
+had found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for
+departure, with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the
+direction from which he had entered.
+
+Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to
+Lady Grace. “I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public
+defiance of me!”
+
+They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance
+she met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms
+into which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not
+following it up. She pronounced in quick warning “Lord John!”--for
+their friend, released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was
+already there.
+
+He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. “Bender’s at last
+off, but”--he indicated the direction of the garden front--“you may
+still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate.”
+
+Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained.
+He looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from
+his daughter’s suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious
+young woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had
+a gesture of almost desperate indifference and passed quickly out by the
+door to the terrace.
+
+It had left Lord John gaping. “What on earth’s the matter with your
+father?”
+
+“What on earth indeed?” Lady Grace unaidingly asked. “Is he discussing
+with that awful man?”
+
+“Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?” Lord John showed
+surprise--which might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he
+shook everything off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old
+Bender away. “My dear girl, what do _we_ care--?”
+
+“I care immensely, I assure you,” she interrupted, “and I ask of you,
+please, to tell me!”
+
+Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected,
+threw him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. “Ah, it’s not
+for such a matter I’m here, Lady Grace--I’m here with that fond question
+of my own.” And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement
+motion of protest: “I’ve come for your kind answer--the answer your
+father instructed me to count on.”
+
+“I’ve no kind answer to give you!”--she raised forbidding hands. “I
+entreat you to leave me alone.”
+
+There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as
+if stricken by violence. “In God’s name then what has happened--when you
+almost gave me your word?”
+
+“What has happened is that I’ve found it impossible to listen to you.”
+ And she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
+
+He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in
+her quick circuit of the hall. “That’s all you’ve got to say to me after
+what has passed between us?”
+
+He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her
+passionate denial set him a limit. “I’ve got to say--sorry as I am--that
+if you _must_ have an answer it’s this: that never, Lord John, never,
+can there be anything more between us.” And her gesture cleared her
+path, permitting her to achieve her flight. “Never, no, never,” she
+repeated as she went--“never, never, never!” She got off by the door at
+which she had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and
+defeated, left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a
+chair and remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the
+great blank splendour.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by
+the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person
+coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr.
+Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway
+forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample,
+lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection
+with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not
+immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.
+
+“But Mr. Crimble------?”
+
+“Here he is, my lady.” And he made way for that gentleman, who
+emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt
+withdrawal.
+
+“I went in for a minute, with your servant’s permission,” Hugh
+explained, “to see your famous Lawrence--which is splendid; he was so
+good as to arrange the light.” The young man’s dress was of a form less
+relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft
+felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the
+limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.
+
+Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
+act. “Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do--and even seems to
+have ended by taking her for his very own.”
+
+“One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of
+her line,” Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement
+of replying; “and I must make sure of another look at her when I’ve a
+good deal more time.”
+
+His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. “You hadn’t then come
+_for_ the poor dear?” And then as he obviously hadn’t, but for something
+quite else: “I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be
+coveted--!” It dropped with a yearning sigh.
+
+“You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?” Hugh asked. “Ah, I
+shall never do their work--unless to betray them: _that_ I shouldn’t in
+the least mind!--and I’m here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your
+consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if
+she can kindly give me time.”
+
+“You’ve known then of her being with me?”
+
+“I’ve known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,”
+ he explained; “of her wishing not to go to her sister’s, and of Lord
+Theign’s having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of
+proceeding, to some foreign part.”
+
+“And you’ve learnt it from having seen her--these three or four weeks?”
+
+“I’ve met her--but just barely--two or three times: at a ‘private view’
+at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn’t told
+you?”
+
+Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her
+thick lustre. “I wanted to see how much _you’d_ tell.” She waited even
+as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. “Once again at
+dinner?”
+
+“Yes, but alas not near her!”
+
+“Once then at a private view?--when, with the squash they usually are,
+you might have been very near her indeed!”
+
+The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
+“Yes--it _was_ a squash!”
+
+“And once,” his hostess pursued, “in the lobby of the opera?”
+
+“After ‘Tristan’--yes; but with some awful grand people I didn’t know.”
+
+She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. “Oh, the Pennimans are
+nobody! But now,” she asked, “you’ve come, you say, on ‘business’?”
+
+“Very important, please--which accounts for the hour I’ve ventured and
+the appearance I present.”
+
+“I don’t ask you too much to ‘account,’” Lady Sandgate kindly said; “but
+I can’t not wonder if she hasn’t told you what things have happened.”
+
+He cast about. “She has had no chance to tell me anything--beyond the
+fact of her being here.”
+
+“Without the reason?”
+
+“‘The reason’?” he echoed.
+
+She gave it up, going straighter. “She’s with me then as an old firm
+friend. Under my care and protection.”
+
+“I see”--he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint in
+respect to himself. “She puts you on your guard.”
+
+Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. “She puts me on my
+honour--or at least her father does.”
+
+“As to her seeing _me_”
+
+“As to _my_ seeing at least--what may happen to her.”
+
+“Because--you say--things _have_ happened?”
+
+His companion fairly sounded him. “You’ve only talked--when you’ve
+met--of ‘art’?”
+
+“Well,” he smiled, “‘art is long’!”
+
+“Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord
+Theign is presently due--”
+
+“_Here_, back already from abroad?”--he was all alert.
+
+“He has not yet gone--he comes up this morning to start.”
+
+“And stops here on his way?”
+
+“To take the _train de luxe_ this afternoon to his annual Salsomaggiore.
+But with so little time to spare,” she went on reassuringly, “that,
+to simplify--as he wired me an hour ago from Dedborough--he has given
+rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is particularly to wait for him.”
+
+“And who may therefore arrive at any moment?”
+
+She looked at her bracelet watch. “Scarcely before noon. So you’ll just
+have your chance--”
+
+“Thank the powers then!”--Hugh grasped at it. “I shall have it best if
+you’ll be so good as to tell me first--well,” he faltered, “what it is
+that, to my great disquiet, you’ve further alluded to; what it is that
+has occurred.”
+
+Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
+pronounced. “Haven’t you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
+father’s extreme reprobation?”
+
+“Yes, so much as that--that she must have greatly annoyed him--I have
+been supposing. But isn’t it by her having asked me to act for her? I
+mean about the Mantovano--which I _have_ done.”
+
+Lady Sandgate wondered. “You’ve ‘acted’?”
+
+“It’s what I’ve come to tell her at last--and I’m all impatience.”
+
+“I see, I see”--she had caught a clue. “He hated that--yes; but you
+haven’t really made out,” she put to him, “the _other_ effect of your
+hour at Dedborough?” She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
+his divination had failed, and she didn’t trouble him to confess it.
+“Directly you had gone she ‘turned down’ Lord John. Declined, I mean,
+the offer of his hand in marriage.”
+
+Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. “He proposed
+there--?”
+
+“He had spoken, that day, _before_--before your talk with Lord Theign,
+who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
+Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you _had_
+gone, for his answer--”
+
+“She wouldn’t have him?” Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.
+
+But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. “She wouldn’t look
+at him.”
+
+He bethought himself. “But had she said she would?”
+
+“So her father indignantly considers.”
+
+“That’s the _ground_ of his indignation?”
+
+“He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
+crisis.”
+
+Hugh Crimble turned this over--feeling apparently for something he
+didn’t find. “I’m sorry to hear such things, but where’s the connection
+with me?”
+
+“Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don’t see any---!” In that case,
+Lady Sandgate’s motion implied, she washed her hands of it.
+
+Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
+to guess a conundrum--which he gave up. “I really don’t see any, Lady
+Sandgate. But,” he a little inconsistently said, “I’m greatly obliged to
+you for telling me.”
+
+“Don’t mention it!--though I think it _is_ good of me,” she smiled, “on
+so short an acquaintance.” To which she added more gravely: “I leave you
+the situation--but I’m willing to let you know that I’m all on Grace’s
+side.”
+
+“So am I, _rather!_--please let me frankly say.”
+
+He clearly refreshed, he even almost charmed her. “It’s the very least
+you can say!--though I’m not sure whether you say it as the simplest
+or as the very subtlest of men. But in case you don’t know as I do how
+little the particular candidate I’ve named----”
+
+“Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?” he broke in--all quick
+intelligence here at least. “No, I don’t perhaps know as well as you
+do--but I think I know as well as I just yet require.”
+
+“There you are then! And if you did prevent,” his hostess maturely
+pursued, “what wouldn’t have been--well, good or nice, I’m quite on your
+side too.”
+
+Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at
+a meaning. “You’re with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of
+effort or ingenuity--”
+
+“The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?”--she took his presumed sense
+faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her reply
+to it. “Well, will you keep the secret of everything I’ve said or say?”
+
+“To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!”
+
+“Then,” she momentously returned, “I only want, too, to make Bender
+impossible. If you ask me,” she pursued, “how I arrange that with my
+deep loyalty to Lord Theign----”
+
+“I don’t ask you anything of the sort,” he interrupted--“I wouldn’t ask
+you for the world; and my own bright plan for achieving the _coup_ you
+mention------”
+
+“You’ll have time, at the most,” she said, consulting afresh her
+bracelet watch, “to explain to Lady Grace.” She reached an electric
+bell, which she touched--facing then her visitor again with an abrupt
+and slightly embarrassed change of tone. “You do think _my_ great
+portrait splendid?”
+
+He had strayed far from it and all too languidly came back. “Your
+Lawrence there? As I said, magnificent.”
+
+But the butler had come in, interrupting, straight from the lobby; of
+whom she made her request. “Let her ladyship know--Mr. Crimble.”
+
+Gotch looked hard at Hugh and the crumpled hat--almost as if having an
+option. But he resigned himself to repeating, with a distinctness that
+scarce fell short of the invidious, “Mr. Crimble,” and departed on his
+errand.
+
+Lady Sandgate’s fair flush of diplomacy had meanwhile not faded.
+“Couldn’t you, with your immense cleverness and power, get the
+Government to do something?”
+
+“About your picture?” Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment.
+“You too then want to sell?”
+
+Oh she righted herself. “Never to a private party!”
+
+“Mr. Bender’s not after it?” he asked--though scarce lighting his
+reluctant interest with a forced smile.
+
+“Most intensely after it. But never,” cried the proprietress, “to a
+bloated alien!”
+
+“Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not,” he asked, “carrying
+that magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as
+the object itself?”
+
+“Give it you for nothing?” She threw up shocked hands. “Because I’m an
+aged female pauper and can’t make _every_ sacrifice.”
+
+Hugh pretended--none too convincingly--to think. “Will you let them have
+it very cheap?”
+
+“Yes--for less than such a bribe as Bender’s.”
+
+“Ah,” he said expressively, “that might be, and still----!”
+
+“Well,” she had a flare of fond confidence. “I’ll find out what he’ll
+offer--if you’ll on your side do what you can--and then ask them a third
+less.” And she followed it up--as if suddenly conceiving him a prig.
+“See here, Mr. Crimble, I’ve been--and this very first time I--charming
+to you.”
+
+“You have indeed,” he returned; “but you throw back on it a lurid light
+if it has all been for _that!_”
+
+“It has been--well, to keep things as I want them; and if I’ve given you
+precious information mightn’t you on your side--”
+
+“Estimate its value in cash?”--Hugh sharply took her up. “Ah, Lady
+Sandgate, I _am_ in your debt, but if you really bargain for your
+precious information I’d rather we assume that I haven’t enjoyed it.”
+
+She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady
+Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the
+nearer door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. “I
+won’t bargain with the Treasury!”--she had passed out by the time Lady
+Grace arrived.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+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 Pappen-dick, 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 incoming 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’?”
+
+“Can’t I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?”--he had his answer
+ready. “You’ve sought asylum with this good friend from the effects of
+your father’s resentment.”
+
+“‘Sought asylum’ is perhaps excessive,” Lady Grace returned--“though
+it wasn’t pleasant with him after that hour, no,” she allowed. “And I
+couldn’t go, you see, to Kitty.”
+
+“No indeed, you couldn’t go to Kitty.” He smiled at her hard as he
+added: “I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is
+it that I’ve set you adrift--that I’ve darkened and poisoned your days.
+You’re paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so
+gallantly in my grand remonstrance.”
+
+She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again--as if
+accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of
+her state. “Why do you talk of it as ‘paying’--if it’s all to come back
+to my _being_ paid? I mean by your blest success--if you really do what
+you want.”
+
+“I have your word for it,” he searchingly said, “that our really pulling
+it off together will make up to you----?”
+
+“I should be ashamed if it didn’t, for everything!”--she took the
+question from his mouth. “I believe in such a cause exactly as you
+do--and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your
+faith.”
+
+“Then you’ll help me no end,” he said all simply and sincerely.
+
+“You’ve helped _me_ already”--that she gave him straight back. And on it
+they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.
+
+“You’re very wonderful--for a girl!” Hugh brought out.
+
+“One _has_ to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one’s house,”
+ she laughed; “and that’s all I am of ours--but a true and a right and a
+straight one.”
+
+He glowed with his admiration. “You’re splendid!”
+
+That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any
+rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. “I see our situation.”
+
+“So do I, Lady Grace!” he cried with the strongest emphasis. “And your
+father only doesn’t.”
+
+“Yes,” she said for intelligent correction--“he sees it, there’s nothing
+in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong.”
+
+Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that
+he wouldn’t have seized. “He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other
+day he took as a rude protest. And any protest----”
+
+“Any protest,” she quickly and fully agreed, “he takes as an offence,
+yes. It’s his theory that he still has rights,” she smiled, “though he
+_is_ a miserable peer.”
+
+“How should he not have rights,” said Hugh, “when he has really
+everything on earth?”
+
+“Ah, he doesn’t even _know_ that--he takes it so much for granted.” And
+she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. “He
+lives all in his own world.”
+
+“He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours--quite
+as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube.” With which
+Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. “And he must be
+here to do business to-day.”
+
+“You know,” Lady Grace asked, “that he’s to meet Mr. Bender?”
+
+“Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and,” her companion saw as he glanced
+at the clock on the chimney, “I’ve only ten minutes, at best. The
+‘Journal’ won’t have been good for him,” he added--“you doubtless have
+seen the ‘Journal’?”
+
+“No”--she was vague. “We live by the ‘Morning Post.’”
+
+“That’s why our friend here didn’t speak then,” Hugh said with a better
+light--“which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn’t do, either.
+But they’ve a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi,
+and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty--if we don’t do
+something energetic--of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering
+horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge
+cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the
+rumour current--as too horrific to believe--of Lord Theign’s putting up
+his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such
+sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and
+momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent
+authorities.”
+
+“Of whom,” said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, “you’re of
+course seen as not the least.”
+
+“Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I’m as yet--however I’m ‘seen’--the
+whole collection. But we’ve time”--he rested on that “The fat, if you’ll
+allow me the expression, is on the fire--which, as I see the matter, is
+where this particular fat _should_ be.”
+
+“Is the article, then,” his companion appealed, “very severe?”
+
+“I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent--and the
+great thing is that it immensely ‘marks,’ as they say. It will have made
+a big public difference--from this day; though it’s of course aimed not
+so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow
+to tackle.”
+
+“Exactly”--she was full of the saving vision; “but as the conditions are
+directly embodied in persons----”
+
+“Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it
+bells three or four.”
+
+“Yes,” she richly brooded--“Lady Lappington _is_ a cat!”
+
+“She will have been ‘belled,’ at any rate, with your father,” Hugh
+amusedly went on, “to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good
+for us--I mean for _us_ in particular.” Yet he had to bethink himself.
+“The case depends a good deal of course on how your father _takes_ such
+a resounding rap.”
+
+“Oh, I know how he’ll take it!”--her perception went all the way.
+
+“In the very highest and properest spirit?”
+
+“Well, you’ll see.” She was as brave as she was clear. “Or at least I
+shall!”
+
+Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. “You _are_, yes,
+splendid!”
+
+“I even,” she laughed, “surprise myself.”
+
+But he was already back at his calculations. “How early do the papers
+get to you?”
+
+“At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast--which isn’t, however, very
+early.”
+
+“Then that’s what has caused his wire to Bender.”
+
+“But how will such talk strike _him_?” the girl asked.
+
+Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought,
+he had let it lead him to certainty. “It will have moved Mr. Bender to
+absolute rapture.”
+
+“Rather,” Lady Grace wondered, “than have put him off?”
+
+“It will have put him prodigiously _on!_ Mr. Bender--as he said to me
+at Dedborough of his noble host there,” Hugh pursued--“is ‘a very nice
+man’; but he’s a product of the world of advertisment, and advertisement
+is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish
+in water.”
+
+She took it from him as half doubting. “But mayn’t advertisement, in so
+special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?”
+
+Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught
+from foreign comrades. “He rides the biggest whirlwind--he has got it
+saddled and bitted.”
+
+She faced the image, but cast about “Then where does our success come
+in?”
+
+“In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him.”
+ And Hugh further pointed the moral. “If in such proceedings all he
+knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it’s only a
+question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself,
+you see, he’ll have too much for every one else--so that we shall ‘up’
+in a body and slay him.”
+
+The girl’s eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. “But if
+he has meanwhile got the picture?”
+
+“We’ll slay him before he gets it!” He revelled in the breadth of his
+view. “Our own policy must be to _organise_ to that end the inevitable
+outcry. Organise Bender himself--organise him to scandal.” Hugh had
+already even pity to spare for their victim. “He won’t know it from a
+boom.”
+
+Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. “But that
+will be only if he wants and decides for the picture.”
+
+“We must make him then want and decide for it--decide, that is, for
+‘ours.’ To save it we must work him up--he’ll in that case want it so
+indecently much. Then _we_ shall have to want it more!”
+
+“Well,” she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, “you can take a
+horse to water----!”
+
+“Oh, trust me to make him drink!”
+
+There appeared a note in this that convinced her. “It’s you, Mr.
+Crimble, who are ‘splendid’!”
+
+“Well, I shall be--with my jolly wire!” And all on that scent again,
+“May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick’s news?” he asked.
+
+“Why, rather, of course, come back!”
+
+“Only not,” he debated, “till your father has left.”
+
+Lady Grace considered too, but sharply decided. “Come when you _have_
+it. But tell me first,” she added, “one thing.” She hung fire a little
+while he waited, but she brought it out. “Was it you who got the
+‘Journal’ to speak?”
+
+“Ah, one scarcely ‘gets’ the ‘Journal’!”
+
+“Who then gave them their ‘tip’?”
+
+“About the Mantovano and its peril?” Well, he took a moment--but only
+not to say; in addition to which the butler had reappeared, entering
+from the lobby. “I’ll tell you,” he laughed, “when I come back!”
+
+Gotch had his manner of announcement while the visitor was mounting the
+stairs. “Mr. Breckenridge Bender!”
+
+“Ah then I go,” said Lady Grace at once.
+
+“I’ll stay three minutes.” Hugh turned with her, alertly, to the easier
+issue, signalling hope and cheer from that threshold as he watched her
+disappear; after which he faced about with as brave a smile and as ready
+for immediate action as if she had there within kissed her hand to him.
+Mr. Bender emerged at the same instant, Gotch withdrawing and closing
+the door behind him; and the former personage, recognising his young
+friend, threw up his hands for friendly pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+“Ah, Mr. Crimble,” he cordially inquired, “you’ve come with your great
+news?”
+
+Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment.
+“News of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven’t news _yet_.” But he
+added as with high candour for the visitor’s motion of disappointment:
+“I think I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four
+weeks.”
+
+“Well, in _my_ country,” Mr. Bender returned with disgust, “it would
+take three or four minutes! Can’t you make ‘em step more lively?”
+
+“I’m expecting, sir,” said Hugh good-humouredly, “a report from hour to
+hour.”
+
+“Then will you let me have it right off?”
+
+Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: “Ah, it’s scarcely
+for you, Mr. Bender, that I’m acting!”
+
+The great collector was but briefly checked. “Well, can’t you just act
+for Art?”
+
+“Oh, you’re doing that yourself so powerfully,” Hugh laughed, “that I
+think I had best leave it to you!”
+
+His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a
+new improvement. “Don’t you want to go round acting _with_ me?”
+
+“Go ‘on tour,’ as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said, “if I
+had any weight----!”
+
+“You’d add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that _you_
+should go back on me--after working me up so down there? The worst I’ve
+done,” Mr. Bender continued, “is to refuse that Moretto.”
+
+“Has it deplorably been _offered_ you?” our young man cried,
+unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his
+fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving
+the owner of the great work away: “Then why are you--as if you were a
+banished Romeo--so keen for news from Verona?” To this odd mixture of
+business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself
+with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of
+tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: “Aren’t you here,
+sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?”
+
+“I’m here,” he then imperturbably said, “because Lord Theign has wired
+me to meet him. Ain’t you here for that yourself?”
+
+Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a “big” choice of answers.
+“Dear, no! I’ve but been in, by Lady Sandgate’s leave, to see that grand
+Lawrence.”
+
+“Ah yes, she’s very kind about it--one does go ‘in.’” After which Mr.
+Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity.
+“Is any one _after_ that grand Lawrence?”
+
+“Oh, I hope not,” Hugh laughed, “unless you again dreadfully are:
+wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there.”
+
+“You call it,” Mr. Bender impartially inquired, “a _very_ wonderful
+thing?”
+
+“Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over”--Hugh spoke as for
+the strictly aesthetic awkwardness of that. “But you know I take my
+pictures hard.” He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this
+connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. “I must make my
+little _rapport_.” Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain. “We’re
+a band of young men who care--and we watch the great things. Also--for I
+must give you the real truth about myself--we watch the great people.”
+
+“Well, I guess I’m used to being watched--if that’s the worst you can
+do.” To which Mr. Bender added in his homely way: “But you know, Mr.
+Crimble, what I’m _really_ after.”
+
+Hugh’s strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. “The man in
+this morning’s ‘Journal’ appears at least to have discovered.”
+
+“Yes, the man in this morning’s ‘Journal’ has discovered three or four
+weeks--as it appears to take you here for everything--after my beginning
+to talk. Why, they knew I was talking _that_ time ago on the other
+side.”
+
+“Oh, they know things in the States,” Hugh cheerfully agreed, “so
+independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud.”
+
+“Well, I haven’t so much talked as raved,” Mr. Bender conceded--“for I’m
+afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me
+at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the
+echo.”
+
+“Then they’ll make up for lost time! But have you done it,” Hugh asked,
+“to prepare an alibi?”
+
+“An alibi?”
+
+“By ‘raving,’ as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don’t think
+you at all believe you’ll get the Sir Joshua--but meanwhile we shall
+have cleared up the question of the Moretto.”
+
+Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn’t speak till he had done justice to this
+picture of his subtlety. “Then, why on earth do you want to boom the
+Moretto?”
+
+“You ask that,” said Hugh, “because it’s the boomed thing that’s most in
+peril.”
+
+“Well, it’s the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag
+their value to the light why shouldn’t we want to grab them and carry
+them off--the same as all of _you_ originally did?”
+
+“Ah, not quite the same,” Hugh smiled--“that I _will_ say for you!”
+
+“Yes, you stick it on now--you _have_ got an eye for the rise in values.
+But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad
+that, to such a time, I’ll pay it you.”
+
+Our young man kept, during a moment’s thought, his eyes on his
+companion, and then resumed with all intensity and candour: “You may
+easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me--as you appear too much for far
+greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on
+_this_, as to any case in which that happens--that when precious things,
+things we are to lose here, _are_ knocked down to you, you’ll let us at
+least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before
+they’re borne off?”
+
+Mr. Bender’s big face fell almost with a crash. “Hand them over, you
+mean, to the sandwich men on Bond Street?”
+
+“To one or other of the placard and poster men--I don’t insist on the
+inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be
+on view for three or four weeks.”
+
+“You ask me,” Mr. Bender returned, “for a _general_ assurance to that
+effect?”
+
+“Well, a particular one--so it be particular enough,” Hugh said--“will
+do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue--well, of the value
+that’s actually in the scales.”
+
+“The Mantovano-Moretto?”
+
+“The Moretto-Mantovano!”
+
+Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. “Hadn’t we better know which it is
+first?”
+
+Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. “The public
+interest--playing so straight on the question--may help to settle it.
+By which I mean that it will profit enormously--the question of
+probability, of identity itself will--by the discussion it will create.
+The discussion will promote certainty----”
+
+“And certainty,” Mr. Bender massively mused, “will kick up a row.”
+
+“_Of course_ it will kick up a row!”--Hugh thoroughly guaranteed that.
+“You’ll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England--if you
+venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign.”
+
+“Whom it won’t be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing
+down.”
+
+“But whom it will be exceedingly _mine_ to practise on”--and Hugh
+laughed as at the fun before them--“if I may entertain the sweet hope
+of success. The only thing is--from my point of view,” he went on--“that
+backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn’t in the least
+in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should be really
+too much of it for his taste or his nerves he’ll set his handsome face
+as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what I appeal to
+you for will have taken place--the picture will have been seen by a lot
+of people who’ll care.”
+
+“It will have been seen,” Mr. Bender amended--“on the mere contingency
+of my acquisition of it--only if its present owner consents.”
+
+“‘Consents’?” Hugh almost derisively echoed; “why, he’ll propose it
+himself, he’ll insist on it, he’ll put it through, once he’s angry
+enough--as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal
+act of his will be sure to make him; and I’m afraid the striking
+criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown
+on his flame of bravado.”
+
+Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion.
+“Yes, I guess he’s pretty mad.”
+
+“They’ve imputed to him”--Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense--“an
+intention of which after all he isn’t guilty.”
+
+“So that”--his listener glowed with interested optimism--“if they don’t
+look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he’ll just go and be
+guilty!”
+
+Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly
+elated by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped.
+“You entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh
+fisher in troubled waters?” And then with a finer art, as his companion,
+expansively bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound
+_him_: “The strongest thing in such a type--one does make out--is his
+resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is
+quite that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the
+groaning board of his banquet of life to _be_ such a liberty.”
+
+Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed
+aristocratic illusion. “Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes,
+the way those of you who have got things fixed for them _do_, over here;
+and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark--”
+
+But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced
+to the mere synthetic interjection “My!”
+
+“That’s it, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral;
+“he won’t quit it without a hard struggle.”
+
+Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high
+calculation of impunity. “Well, I guess he won’t struggle too hard for
+me to hold on to him if I _want_ to!”
+
+“In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be,” Hugh returned,
+“don’t forget what I’ve urged on you--the claim of our desolate
+country.”
+
+But his friend had an answer to this. “My natural interest, Mr.
+Crimble--considering what I do for it--is in the claim of ours. But I
+wish you were on my side!”
+
+“Not so much,” Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, “as I wish you were
+on mine!” Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. “Good-bye--for another
+look here!”
+
+He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his
+companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. “How much is
+she really worth?”
+
+“‘She’?” Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. “Lady Sandgate?”
+
+“Her great-grandmother.”
+
+A responsible answer was prevented--the butler was again with them; he
+had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage
+under his convoy. “Lord John!”
+
+Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape.
+“Oh, ask _that_ friend!” With which he sought the further passage to the
+staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch,
+who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that
+her ladyship would come, left them together.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+“Then Theign’s not yet here!” Lord John had to resign himself as he
+greeted his American ally. “But he told me I should find you.”
+
+“He has kept me waiting,” that gentleman returned--“but what’s the
+matter with him anyway?”
+
+“The matter with him”--Lord John treated such ignorance as
+irritating--“must of course be this beastly thing in the ‘Journal.’”
+
+Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such
+connections. “What’s the matter with the beastly thing?”
+
+“Why, aren’t you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at
+you?”
+
+“If you call _that_ a regular dig you can’t have had much experience of
+the Papers. I’ve known them to dig much deeper.”
+
+“I’ve had _no_ experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do
+you mean to say,” asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy,
+“that you don’t unpleasantly feel it?”
+
+“Feel it where, my dear sir?”
+
+“Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!”
+
+“All over me at once?”--Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. “Well,
+I’m a large man--so when I want to feel so much I look out for something
+good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine--ain’t that
+what you wear?--does our friend propose to do about it?”
+
+Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the
+apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before
+them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once
+referred the question. “What _will_ Theign propose, do you think, Lady
+Sandgate, to do about it?”
+
+She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. “To ‘do’----?”
+
+“Don’t you know about the thing in the ‘Journal’--awfully offensive all
+round?”
+
+“There’d be even a little pinch for _you_ in it,” Mr. Bender said to
+her--“if you were bent on fitting the shoe!”
+
+Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her
+elder guest while she took her place with them. “Oh, the shoes of such
+monsters as that are much too big for poor _me!_” But she was more
+specific for Lord John. “I know only what Grace has just told me; but
+since it’s a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly--what you
+may call--take his stand!”
+
+Lord John welcomed this assurance. “If I know him he’ll take it
+splendidly!”
+
+Mr. Bender’s attention was genial, though rather more detached. “And
+what--while he’s about it--will he take it particularly _on?_”
+
+“Oh, we’ve plenty of things, thank heaven,” said Lady Sandgate, “for a
+man in Theign’s position to hold fast by!”
+
+Lord John freely confirmed it. “Scores and scores--rather! And I will
+say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may
+soon become a real convenience.”
+
+Mr. Bender seemed struck--and not unsympathetic. “I see that your system
+would be rather a fraud if you hadn’t pretty well fixed _that!_”
+
+Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned
+and convinced. “It doesn’t, however, alter the fact that we’ve thus in
+our ears the first growl of an outcry.”
+
+“Ah,” Lord John concurred, “we’ve unmistakably the first growl of an
+outcry!”
+
+Mr. Bender’s judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign,
+introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the
+result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself.
+“Why, they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl
+of an outcry!”
+
+The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been
+held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least
+that a certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his
+lordship’s aspect would have been explained by his having taken the
+full measure--an inner success with which he glowed--of some high
+provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house;
+he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his
+journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole
+effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and
+every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly
+unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy
+pitch that he replied to the prime upsetter of his peace.
+
+“I’m afraid I don’t know what anything means to _you_, Mr. Bender--but
+it’s exactly to find out that I’ve asked you, with our friend John,
+kindly to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your
+good leave,” he went on to Lady Sandgate; “at which I’m only too pleased
+that you yourself should assist. The ‘first growl’ of any outcry, I may
+mention to you all, affects me no more than the last will----!”
+
+“So I’m delighted to gather”--Lady Sandgate took him straight up--“that
+you don’t let go your inestimable Cure.”
+
+He at first quite stared superior--“‘Let go’?”--but then treated it with
+a lighter touch. “Upon my honour I might, you know--that dose of the
+daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate,” he pursued
+to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, “I arrive with my
+decision taken--which I’ve thought may perhaps interest you. If that
+tuppeny rot _is_ an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud.”
+
+Lord John rejoicingly approved. “Absolutely the only way--with the least
+self-respect--to treat it!”
+
+Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. “But are you
+sure it’s so easy, Theign, to hush up a _real_ noise?”
+
+“It ain’t what I’d call a real one, Lady Sandgate,” Mr. Bender said;
+“you can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two
+or three mice! But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will
+interest me to hear what sort of a trap--by what you say--you propose to
+set for them.”
+
+“You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender,” his lordship
+replied, “the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my
+absolutely personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin
+of any definite report of which--in such circles!--I’m afraid I rather
+wonder if you yourself can’t give me a clue.”
+
+It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. “You
+rather wonder if I’ve talked of how I feel about your detaining in your
+hands my Beautiful Duchess----?”
+
+“Oh, if you’ve already published her as ‘yours’--with your _power_
+of publication!” Lord Theign coldly laughed,--“of course I trace the
+connection!”
+
+Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of
+a pang. “Why, I haven’t for quite a while talked of a blessed other
+thing--and I’m capable of growing more profane over my _not_ getting her
+than I guess any one would dare to be if I did.”
+
+“Well, you’ll certainly not ‘get’ her, Mr. Bender,” Lady Sandgate, as
+for reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; “and even if there were a
+chance of it don’t you see that your way wouldn’t be publicly to abuse
+our noble friend?”
+
+Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. “Oh, I guess
+our noble friend knows I _have_ to talk big about big things. You
+understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!”
+
+“I’ll forgive you,” Lord Theign civilly returned, “all the big talk
+you like if you’ll now understand _me_. My retort to that hireling pack
+shall be at once to dispose of a picture.”
+
+Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. “But that’s what you wanted to do
+before.”
+
+“Pardon me,” said his lordship--“I make a difference. It’s what you
+wanted me to do.”
+
+The mystification, however, continued. “And you were _not_--as you
+seemed then--willing?”
+
+Lord Theign waived cross-questions. “Well, I’m willing _now_--that’s all
+that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time,” he added
+with all authority, “you can’t have our Duchess!”
+
+“You can’t have our Duchess!”--and Lord John, as before the altar of
+patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.
+
+“You can’t have our Duchess!” Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace
+that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet
+sociability as she added: “I wish he’d tell you too, you dreadful rich
+thing, that you can’t have anything at all!”
+
+Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that
+rigour. “Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?”
+
+“And what--as it _is_,” Mr. Bender asked--“becomes of my unhappy
+grievance?”
+
+“Wouldn’t a really great capture make up to you for that?”
+
+“Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have--and it
+depends, don’t you see, on how you measure the size.”
+
+Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. “Shouldn’t you
+like to go back there and take the measure yourself?”
+
+Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. “Look again at
+that tottering Moretto?”
+
+“Well, its size--as you say--isn’t in _any_ light a negligible
+quantity.”
+
+“You mean that--big as it is--it hasn’t yet stopped growing?”
+
+The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord
+Theign himself meant “It’s more to the purpose,” he said to Mr. Bender,
+“that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words
+the very essence, of my plan of campaign--which is to put the picture at
+once on view.” He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. “On
+view as a thing definitely disposed of.”
+
+“I say, I say, I say!” cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to
+high admiration.
+
+Lady Sandgate’s approval was more qualified. “But on view, dear Theign,
+how?”
+
+“With one of those pushing people in Bond Street.” And then as for the
+crushing climax of his policy: “As a Mantovano pure and simple.”
+
+“But my dear man,” she quavered, “if it _isn’t_ one?”
+
+Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him
+and he let out sail. “Lady Sand-gate, it’s going, by all that’s--well,
+interesting, to _be_ one!”
+
+Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. “You seize me? We _treat_ it as
+one!”
+
+Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. “We _treat_ it as one!”
+
+Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought--he even
+gave it back larger. “As the long-lost Number Eight!”
+
+Lord Theign happily seized _him_. “That will be it--to a charm!”
+
+“It will make them,” Mr. Bender asked, “madder than anything?”
+
+His patron--if not his client--put it more nobly. “It will markedly
+affirm my attitude.”
+
+“Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion.”
+
+“It may create all it will!”
+
+“Well, if _you_ don’t mind it, _I_ don’t!” Mr. Bender concluded. But
+though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid application
+of it elsewhere. “You’ll put the thing on view right off?”
+
+“As soon as the proper arrangement----”
+
+“You put off your journey to _make_ it?” Lady Sand-gate at once broke in.
+
+Lord Theign bethought himself--with the effect of a gracious confidence
+in the others. “Not if these friends will act.”
+
+“Oh, I guess we’ll _act!_” Mr. Bender declared.
+
+“Ah, _won’t_ we though!” Lord John re-echoed.
+
+“You understand then I have an interest?” Mr. Bender went on to Lord
+Theign.
+
+His lordship’s irony met it. “I accept that complication--which so much
+simplifies!”
+
+“And yet also have a liberty?”
+
+“Where else would be those you’ve taken? The point is,” said Lord
+Theign, “that _I_ have a show.”
+
+It settled Mr. Bender. “Then I’ll _fix_ your show.” He snatched up his
+hat. “Lord John, come right round!”
+
+Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the
+whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking
+leave of the others he gave it even his applause. “The fellow can do
+anything anywhere!” And he hastily followed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their
+companion’s enthusiasm. “That may be true of Mr. Bender--for it’s
+dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror.”
+
+“Well,” said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the
+question, “I dare say a terror will help me.” He had other business to
+which he at once gave himself. “And now, if you please, for that girl.”
+
+“I’ll send her to you,” she replied, “if you can’t stay to luncheon.”
+
+“I’ve three or four things to do,” he pleaded, “and I lunch with Kitty
+at one.”
+
+She submitted in that case--but disappointedly. “With Berkeley
+Square then you’ve time. But I confess I don’t quite grasp the so odd
+inspiration that you’ve set those men to carry out.”
+
+He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. “Then it
+needn’t trouble you, dear--it’s enough that I myself go straight.”
+
+“Are you so very convinced it’s straight?”--she wouldn’t be a bore to
+him, but she couldn’t not be a blessing.
+
+“What in the world else is it,” he asked, “when, having good reasons,
+one acts on ‘em?”
+
+“You must have an immense array,” she sighed, “to fly so in the face of
+Opinion!”
+
+“‘Opinion’?” he commented--“I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing,
+as I’m taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my
+umbrella and send it about its business.” To which he added with more
+reproach: “It’s enough to have been dished by Grace--without _your_
+falling away!”
+
+Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. “It’s only my great
+affection--and all that these years have been for us: _they_ it is that
+make me wish you weren’t so proud.”
+
+“I’ve a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us--a
+very charming matter. But ‘proud’ is it you find me of the daughter who
+does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?”
+
+Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point
+of this. “Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair--but are you sure
+you can really bear to see Grace?”
+
+“I seem expected indeed to bear much,” he said with more and more of his
+parental bitterness, “but I don’t know that I’m yet in a funk before
+my child. Doesn’t she _want_ to see me, with any contrition, after the
+trick she has played me?” And then as his companion’s answer failed: “In
+spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no
+sign of her explaining--?”
+
+His hostess raised her head. “She does want to see you, I know; but you
+must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough--when it was you
+who declined to see _her_.”
+
+“Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?”--he
+was entirely reminiscent. “What I recall is that even if I had
+condoned--that evening--her deception of _me_ in my folly, I still
+loathed, for my friend’s sake, her practical joke on poor John.”
+
+Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. “It was your very
+complaint that your own appeal to her _became_ an appeal from herself.”
+
+“Yes,” he returned, so well he remembered, “she was about as civil to
+me then--picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!--as that
+devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant remarks,
+for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!”
+
+His good friend showily balanced and might have been about to reply with
+weight; but what she in fact brought out was only: “I see you’re right
+about it: I must let her speak for herself.”
+
+“That I shall greatly prefer to her speaking--as she did so
+extraordinarily, out of the blue, at Dedborough, upon my honour--for the
+wonderful friends she picks up: the picture-man introduced by her (what
+was his name?) who regularly ‘cheeked’ me, as I suppose he’d call it,
+in my own house, and whom I hope, by the way, that under this roof she’s
+not able to be quite so thick with!”
+
+If Lady Sandgate winced at that vain dream she managed not to betray
+it, and she had, in any embarrassment on this matter, the support, as we
+know, of her own tried policy. “She leads her life under this roof
+very much as under yours; and she’s not of an age, remember, for me
+to pretend either to watch her movements or to control her contacts.”
+ Leaving him however thus to perform his pleasure the charming woman had
+before she went an abrupt change of tone. “Whatever your relations with
+others, dear friend, don’t forget that _I’m_ still here.”
+
+Lord Theign accepted the reminder, though, the circumstances being such,
+it scarce moved him to ecstasy. “That you’re here, thank heaven, is of
+course a comfort--or would be if you understood.”
+
+“Ah,” she submissively sighed, “if I don’t always ‘understand’ a spirit
+so much higher than mine and a situation so much more complicated,
+certainly, I at least always defer, I at least always--well, what can I
+say but worship?” And then as he remained not other than finely passive,
+“The old altar, Theign,” she went on--“and a spark of the old fire!”
+
+He had not looked at her on this--it was as if he shrank, with his
+preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left
+hand. “So I feel!” he was, however, kind enough to answer.
+
+“Do feel!” she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand
+to her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich “Good-bye!” reached the
+threshold of the other room.
+
+“May I smoke?” he asked before she had disappeared.
+
+“Dear, yes!”
+
+He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about
+for a match. But something else occurred to him. “You must come to
+Victoria.”
+
+“Rather!” she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Left alone he had a moment’s meditation where he stood; it found issue
+in an articulate “Poor dear thing!”--an exclamation marked at once with
+patience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which,
+waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed,
+finding matches at last and lighting his cigarette--all with an air
+of concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his
+finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom--if gloom it was--dropped,
+however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene
+through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in
+silence.
+
+“Oh!” he jerked out at sight of her--which she had to content herself
+with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing
+little to qualify its dryness. “I take it for granted that you know
+I’m within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of
+health.” And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her
+possession of this fact: “I’ve thought accordingly that before I go I
+should--on this first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at
+Dedborough--like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my
+absence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me.”
+ He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness,
+to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly
+passive--possibly indeed a trifle portentous. “If you had plotted and
+planned it in advance,” he none the less firmly pursued, “if you had
+acted from some uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn’t have arranged
+more perfectly to incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and
+purposes, make light of me and insult me.” Even before this charge
+she made no sign; with her eyes now attached to the ground she let him
+proceed. “I had practically guaranteed to our excellent, our charming
+friend, your favourable view of his appeal--which you yourself too,
+remember, had left him in so little doubt of!--so that, having by your
+performance so egregiously failed him, I have the pleasure of their
+coming down on me for explanations, for compensations, and for God knows
+what besides.”
+
+Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of
+her attention. “I’m sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong;
+but may I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as ‘they’?”
+
+“‘They’?” he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to
+his more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he
+has tried to pass. “Why, your own sister to begin with--whose interest
+in what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise;
+and _his_ people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular,
+who only wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, and
+as pleasant and as clever, damn it, when all’s said and done, as any
+others that are likely to come your way.” It clearly did his lordship
+good to work out thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to
+him and glowed with irresistible colour. “Letting alone gallant John
+himself, most amiable of men, about whose merits and whose claims you
+appear to have pretended to agree with me just that you might, when he
+presumed, poor chap, ardently to urge them, deal him with the more cruel
+effect that calculated blow on the mouth!”
+
+It was clear that in the girl’s great gravity embarrassment had no
+share. “They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you’re
+obliged to come down on _me?_”
+
+“Assuredly--for some better satisfaction than your just moping here
+without a sign!”
+
+“But a sign of what, father?” she asked--as helpless as a lone islander
+scanning the horizon for a sail.
+
+“Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, the
+predicament into which you’ve put me!”
+
+“Hasn’t it occurred to you in the least that you’ve rather put _me_ into
+one?”
+
+He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. “I put you certainly
+in the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlement
+in life--which all the elements that would make for your enjoying it
+had every appearance of successfully commending to you.” The perfect
+readiness of which on his lips had, like a higher wave, the virtue
+of lifting and dropping him to still more tangible ground. “And if I
+understand you aright as wishing to know whether I apologise for that
+zeal, why you take a most preposterous view of our relation as father
+and daughter.”
+
+“You understand me no better than I fear I understand you,” Lady Grace
+returned, “if what you expect of me is really to take back my words to
+Lord John.” And then as he didn’t answer, while their breach gaped like
+a jostled wound, “Have you seriously come to propose--and from _him_
+again,” she added--“that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lend
+myself to your beautiful arrangement?”
+
+It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for his
+dignity, not give way to passion. “I’ve come, above all, for _this_, I
+may say, Grace: to remind you of whom you’re addressing when you jibe at
+me, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand--exactly as to whether
+you judged us to have actively _incurred_ your treatment of our unhappy
+friend, to have brought it upon us, he and I, by my refusal to discuss
+with you at such a crisis the question of my disposition of a particular
+item of my property. I’ve only to look at you, for that matter,” Lord
+Theign continued--always with a finer point and a higher consistency as
+his rehearsal of his wrongs broadened--“to have my inquiry, as it seems
+to me, eloquently answered. You flounced away from poor John, you took,
+as he tells me, ‘his head off,’ just to repay me for what you chose to
+regard as my snub on the score of your challenging my entertainment of
+a possible purchaser; a rebuke launched at me, practically, in the
+presence of a most inferior person, a stranger and an intruder, from
+whom you had all the air of taking your cue for naming me the great
+condition on which you’d gratify my hope. Am I to understand, in other
+words,”--and his lordship mounted to a climax--“that you sent us
+about our business because I failed to gratify _your_ hope: that of my
+knocking under to your sudden monstrous pretension to lay down the law
+for my choice of ways and means of raising, to my best convenience, a
+considerable sum of money? You’ll be so good as to understand, once
+for all, that I recognise there no right of interference from any
+quarter--and also to let that knowledge govern your behaviour in my
+absence.”
+
+Lady Grace had thus for some minutes waited on his words--waited even as
+almost with anxiety for the safe conduct he might look to from some of
+the more extravagant of them. But he at least felt at the end--if it
+was an end--all he owed them; so that there was nothing for her but to
+accept as achieved his dreadful felicity. “You’re very angry with
+me, and I hope you won’t feel me simply ‘aggravating’ if I say that,
+thinking everything over, I’ve done my best to allow for that. But I
+_can_ answer your question if I do answer it by saying that my discovery
+of your possible sacrifice of one of our most beautiful things didn’t
+predispose me to decide in favour of a person--however ‘backed’ by
+you--for whose benefit the sacrifice was to take place. Frankly,” the
+girl pushed on, “I did quite hate, for the moment, everything that might
+make for such a mistake; and took the darkest view, let me also confess,
+of every one, without exception, connected with it I interceded with
+you, earnestly, for our precious picture, and you wouldn’t on any terms
+_have_ my intercession. On top of that Lord John blundered in, without
+timeliness or tact--and I’m afraid that, as I hadn’t been the least in
+love with him even before, he did have to take the consequence.”
+
+Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as all
+he could possibly want. “You recognise then that your reception of him
+_was_ purely vindictive!--the meaning of which is that unless my conduct
+of my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens to
+square with your superior wisdom you’ll put me under boycott all round!
+While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charming
+friend’s lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand an
+example, what account have you to offer of the scene you made me
+there before that fellow--your confederate, as he had all the air of
+being!--by giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminently
+done with him after his remarkable display, you at least were but the
+more determined to see him keep it up?”
+
+The girl’s justification, clearly, was very present to her, and not
+less obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding every
+side-issue, keep it very simple, “The only account I can give you, I
+think, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that I
+felt--well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,
+I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn’t do such
+things. I care, if you like, to indiscretion--I care, if you like, to
+offence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you before
+you leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I’m ready to cry out
+to you that you oughtn’t, you oughtn’t, you oughtn’t!”
+
+Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,
+checked her as in an act really of violence--save that, like an inflamed
+young priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her message.
+“Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter--no ‘crying out,’ if you
+please!” After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still kept her
+lighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a minute,
+inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections, taking,
+as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new strange
+measure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a difference
+of tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had supposed,
+so that the case might really call for some coolness. “You keep bad
+company, Grace--it pays the devil with your sense of proportion. If you
+make this row when I sell a picture, what will be left to you when I
+forge a cheque?”
+
+“If you had arrived at the necessity of forging a cheque,” she answered,
+“I should then resign myself to that of your selling a picture.”
+
+“But not short of that!”
+
+“Not short of that. Not one of ours.”
+
+“But I couldn’t,” said his lordship with his best and coldest amusement,
+“sell one of somebody else’s!”
+
+She was, however, not disconcerted. “Other people do other things--they
+appear to have done them, and to be doing them, all about us. But _we_
+have been so decently different--always and ever. We’ve never done
+anything disloyal.”
+
+“‘Disloyal’?”--he was more largely amazed and even interested now.
+
+Lady Grace stuck to her word. “That’s what it seems to _me!_”
+
+“It seems to you”--and his sarcasm here was easy--“more disloyal to sell
+a picture than to buy one? Because we didn’t paint ‘em all ourselves,
+you know!”
+
+She threw up impatient hands. “I don’t ask you either to paint or to
+buy----!”
+
+“Oh, _that’s_ a mercy!” he interrupted, riding his irony hard; “and
+I’m glad to hear you at least let me off _such_ efforts! However, if it
+strikes you as gracefully filial to apply to your father’s conduct so
+invidious a word,” he went on less scathingly, “you must take
+from him, in your turn, his quite other view of what makes
+disloyalty--understanding distinctly, by the same token, that he enjoins
+on you not to give an odious illustration of it, while he’s away, by
+discussing and deploring with any _one_ of your extraordinary
+friends any aspect or feature whatever of his walk and conversation.
+That--pressed as I am for time,” he went on with a glance at his watch
+while she remained silent--“is the main sense of what I have to say to
+you; so that I count on your perfect conformity. When you have told me
+that I _may_ so count”--and casting about for his hat he espied it and
+went to take it up--“I shall more cordially bid you good-bye.”
+
+His daughter looked as if she had been for some time expecting the law
+thus imposed upon her--had been seeing where he must come out; but
+in spite of this preparation she made him wait for his reply in such
+tension as he had himself created. “To Kitty I’ve practically said
+nothing--and she herself can tell you why: I’ve in fact scarcely seen
+her this fortnight. Putting aside then Amy Sandgate, the only person to
+whom I’ve spoken--of your ‘sacrifice,’ as I suppose you’ll let me
+call it?--is Mr. Hugh Crimble, whom you talk of as my ‘confederate’ at
+Dedborough.”
+
+Lord Theign recovered the name with relief. “Mr. Hugh Crimble--that’s
+it!--whom you so amazingly caused to be present, and apparently invited
+to be active, at a business that so little concerned him.”
+
+“He certainly took upon himself to be interested, as I had hoped he
+would. But it was because I had taken upon _my_ self--”
+
+“To act, yes,” Lord Theign broke in, “with the grossest want of
+delicacy! Well, it’s from that exactly that you’ll now forbear;
+and ‘interested’ as he may be--for which I’m deucedly obliged to
+him!--you’ll not speak to Mr. Crimble again.”
+
+“Never again?”--the girl put it as for full certitude.
+
+“Never of the question that I thus exclude. You may chatter your fill,”
+ said his lordship curtly, “about any others.”
+
+“Why, the particular question you forbid,” Grace returned with great
+force, but as if saying something very reasonable--“that question is
+_the_ question we care about: it’s our very ground of conversation.”
+
+“Then,” her father decreed, “your conversation will please to _dispense_
+with a ground; or you’ll perhaps, better still--if that’s the only
+way!--dispense with your conversation.”
+
+Lady Grace took a moment as if to examine this more closely. “You
+require of me not to communicate with Mr. Crimble at all?”
+
+“Most assuredly I require it--since it’s to that you insist on
+reducing me.” He didn’t look reduced, the master of Dedborough, as he
+spoke--which was doubtless precisely because he held his head so high
+to affirm what he suffered. “Is it so essential to your comfort,” he
+demanded, “to hear him, or to make him, abuse me?”
+
+“‘Abusing’ you, father dear, has nothing whatever to do with it!”--his
+daughter had fairly lapsed, with a despairing gesture, to the tenderness
+involved in her compassion for his perversity. “We look at the thing in
+a much larger way,” she pursued, not heeding that she drew from him
+a sound of scorn for her “larger.” “It’s of our Treasure itself we
+talk--and of what can be _done_ in such cases; though with a close
+application, I admit, to the case that you embody.”
+
+“Ah,” Lord Theign asked as with absurd curiosity, “I embody a case?”
+
+“Wonderfully, father--as you do everything; and it’s the fact of its
+being exceptional,” she explained, “that makes it so difficult to deal
+with.”
+
+His lordship had a gape for it. “‘To deal with’? You’re undertaking to
+‘deal’ with me?”
+
+She smiled more frankly now, as for a rift in the gloom. “Well, how can
+we help it if you _will_ be a case?” And then as her tone but visibly
+darkened his wonder: “What we’ve set our hearts on is saving the
+picture.”
+
+“What you’ve set your hearts on, in other words, is working straight
+against me?”
+
+But she persisted without heat. “What we’ve set our hearts on is working
+for England.”
+
+“And pray who in the world’s ‘England,’” he cried in his stupefaction,
+“unless I am?”
+
+“Dear, dear father,” she pleaded, “that’s all we _want_ you to be! I
+mean”--she didn’t fear firmly to force it home--“in the real, the right,
+the grand sense; the sense that, you see, is so intensely ours.”
+
+“‘Ours’?”--he couldn’t but again throw back her word at her. “Isn’t it,
+damn you, just _in_ ours--?”
+
+“No, no,” she interrupted--“not in _ours!_” She smiled at him still,
+though it was strained, as if he really ought to perceive.
+
+But he glared as at a senseless juggle. “What and who the devil are you
+talking about? What are ‘we,’ the whole blest lot of us, pray, but
+the best and most English thing in the country: people walking--and
+riding!--straight; doing, disinterestedly, most of the difficult and all
+the thankless jobs; minding their own business, above all, and expecting
+others to mind theirs?” So he let her “have” the stout sound truth, as
+it were--and so the direct force of it clearly might, by his view, have
+made her reel. “You and I, my lady, and your two decent brothers, God be
+thanked for them, and mine into the bargain, and all the rest, the jolly
+lot of us, take us together--make us numerous enough without any foreign
+aid or mixture: if that’s what I understand you to mean!”
+
+“You don’t understand me at all--evidently; and above all I see you
+don’t want to!” she had the bravery to add, “By ‘our’ sense of what’s
+due to the nation in such a case I mean Mr. Crimble’s and mine--and
+nobody’s else at all; since, as I tell you, it’s only with him I’ve
+talked.”
+
+It gave him then, every inch of him showed, the full, the grotesque
+measure of the scandal he faced. “So that ‘you and Mr. Crimble’
+represent the standard, for me, in your opinion, of the proprieties and
+duties of our house?”
+
+Well, she was too earnest--as she clearly wished to let him see--to mind
+his perversion of it. “I express to you the way we feel.”
+
+“It’s most striking to hear, certainly, what you express”--he
+had positively to laugh for it; “and you speak of him, with your
+insufferable ‘we,’ as if you were presenting him as your--God knows
+what! You’ve enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to have
+arrived at such unanimity.” And then, as if to fall into no trap he
+might somehow be laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebutted
+nothing: “You must see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be able
+to speak of yourself without him!”
+
+“Yes, we’re fellow-critics, father”--she accepted this opening. “I
+perfectly adopt your term.” But it took her a minute to go further. “I
+saw Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago.”
+
+“Saw him ‘here’?” Lord Theign amazedly asked. “He _comes_ to you
+here--and Amy Sandgate has been silent?”
+
+“It wasn’t her business to tell you--since, you see, she could leave it
+to me. And I quite expect,” Lady Grace then produced, “that he’ll come
+again.”
+
+It brought down with a bang all her father’s authority. “Then I simply
+exact of you that you don’t see him.”
+
+The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimming
+cup. “Is that what you _really_ meant by your condition just now--that
+when I do see him I shall not speak to him?”
+
+“What I ‘really meant’ is what I really mean--that you bow to the law I
+lay upon you and drop the man altogether.”
+
+“Have nothing to do with him at all?”
+
+“Have nothing to do with him at all.”
+
+“In fact”--she took it in--“give him wholly up.”
+
+He had an impatient gesture. “You sound as if I asked you to give up
+a fortune!” And then, though she had phrased his idea without
+consternation--verily as if it had been in the balance for her--he
+might have been moved by something that gathered in her eyes. “You’re
+so wrapped up in him that the precious sacrifice is like _that_ sort of
+thing?”
+
+Lady Grace took her time--but showed, as her eyes continued to hold him,
+what _had_ gathered. “I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father--I think
+him clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants--I want it, I think,
+really, as much; and I don’t at all deny that he has helped to make me
+so want it. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll wholly cease to see him, I’ll
+give him up forever, if--if--!” She faltered, however, she hung fire
+with a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she began
+and stopped again, “If--if--!” while her father caught her up with
+irritation.
+
+“‘If,’ my lady? If _what_, please?”
+
+“If you’ll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender--and never
+make another to any one else!”
+
+He stood staring as at the size of it--then translated it into his own
+terms. “If I’ll obligingly announce to the world that I’ve made an ass
+of myself you’ll kindly forbear from your united effort--the charming
+pair of you--to show me up for one?”
+
+Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this,
+simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn’t
+till a minute passed that she said: “You don’t agree to my compromise?”
+
+Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of his
+spirit. “Good God, I’m to ‘compromise’ on top of everything?--I’m to
+let you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I’m
+entitled to settle with you as things have ever _been_ settled among us,
+by uttering to you my last parental word?”
+
+“You don’t care enough then for what you name?”--she took it up as
+scarce heeding now what he said.
+
+“For putting an end to your odious commerce--? I give you the measure,
+on the contrary,” said Lord Theign, “of how much I care: as you give me,
+very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you--!” But
+his other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which he
+broke off in turn as for disgust.
+
+It was with an effect of decently shielding herself--the unuttered
+meaning came so straight--that she substituted words of her own. “Of
+what it costs me to redeem the picture?”
+
+“To lose your tenth-rate friend”--he spoke without scruple now.
+
+She instantly broke into ardent deprecation, pleading at once and
+warning. “Father, father, oh--! You hold the thing in your hands.”
+
+He pulled up before her again as to thrust the responsibility straight
+back. “My orders then are so much rubbish to you?”
+
+Lady Grace held her ground, and they remained face to face in opposition
+and accusation, neither making the other the sign of peace. But the girl
+at least _had_, in her way, held out the olive-branch, while Lord Theign
+had but reaffirmed his will. It was for her acceptance of this that he
+searched her, her last word not having yet come. Before it had done so,
+however, the door from the lobby opened and Mr. Gotch had regained
+their presence. This appeared to determine in Lady Grace a view of the
+importance of delay, which she signified to her companion in a “Well--I
+must think!” For the butler positively resounded, and Hugh was there.
+
+“Mr. Crimble!” Mr. Gotch proclaimed--with the further extravagance of
+projecting the visitor straight upon his lordship.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Our young man showed another face than the face his friend had lately
+seen him carry off, and he now turned it distressfully from that source
+of inspiration to Lord Theign, who was flagrantly, even from this first
+moment, no such source at all, and then from his noble adversary back
+again, under pressure of difficulty and effort, to Lady Grace, whom he
+directly addressed. “Here I am again, you see--and I’ve got my news,
+worse luck!” But his manner to her father was the next instant more
+brisk. “I learned you were here, my lord; but as the case is important I
+told them it was all right and came up. I’ve been to my club,” he
+added for the girl, “and found the tiresome thing--!” But he broke down
+breathless.
+
+“And it isn’t good?” she cried with the highest concern.
+
+Ruefully, yet not abjectly, he confessed, “Not so good as I hoped. For I
+assure you, my lord, I counted--”
+
+“It’s the report from Pappendick about the picture at Verona,” Lady
+Grace interruptingly explained.
+
+Hugh took it up, but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassment
+dismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showing
+thus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any reviving
+possibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. “The man
+I told _you_ about also,” he said to his formidable patron; “whom I
+went to Brussels to talk with and who, most kindly, has gone for us to
+Verona. He has been able to get straight at _their_ Mantovano, but the
+brute horribly wires me that he doesn’t quite see the thing; see, I
+mean”--and he gathered his two hearers together now in his overflow
+of chagrin, conscious, with his break of the ice, more exclusively of
+that--“my vivid vital point, the absolute screaming identity of the two
+persons represented. I still hold,” he persuasively went on, “that
+our man is their man, but Pappendick decides that he isn’t--and as
+Pappendick has so _much_ to be reckoned with of course I’m awfully
+abashed.”
+
+Lord Theign had remained what he had begun by being, immeasurably and
+inaccessibly detached--only with his curiosity more moved than he
+could help and as, on second thought, to see what sort of a still more
+offensive fool the heated youth would really make of himself. “Yes--you
+seem indeed remarkably abashed!”
+
+Hugh clearly was thrown again, by the cold “cut” of this, colder than
+any mere social ignoring, upon a sense of the damnably poor figure he
+did offer; so that, while he straightened himself and kept a mastery of
+his manner and a control of his reply, we should yet have felt his cheek
+tingle. “I backed my own judgment strongly, I know--and I’ve got my
+snub. But I don’t in the least knock under.”
+
+“Only the first authority in Europe doesn’t care, I suppose, whether you
+do or not!”
+
+“He isn’t _the_ first authority in Europe, thank God,” the young man
+returned--“though he is, I admit, one of the three or four first. And
+I mean to appeal--I’ve another shot in my locker,” he went on with his
+rather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. “I had already written, you
+see, to dear old Bardi.”
+
+“Bardi of Milan?”--she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the appeal
+of his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament was
+also for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken without
+her father’s presence.
+
+It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any one
+to perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. “You know of
+him?--how delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel,” he quickly
+explained, “he must have _most_ the instinct--and it has come over me
+since that he’d have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowing
+the Verona picture.”
+
+She had fairly hung on his lips. “But does he know ours?”
+
+“No--not ours yet. That is”--he consciously and quickly took himself
+up--“not yours! But as Pap-pendick went to Verona for us I’ve asked
+Bardi to do us the great favour to come here--if Lord Theign will be so
+good,” he said, bethinking himself with a turn, “as to let him examine
+the Moretto.” He faced again to the personage he mentioned, who,
+simply standing off and watching, in concentrated interest as well as
+detachment, this interview of his cool daughter and her still cooler
+guest, had plainly “elected,” as it were, to give them rope to hang
+themselves. Staring very hard at Hugh he met his appeal, but in a
+silence clearly calculated; against which, however, the young man,
+bearing up, made such head as he could. He offered his next word, that
+is, equally to the two companions. “It’s not at all impossible--for such
+curious effects have been!--that the Dedborough picture seen _after_
+the Verona will point a different moral from the Verona seen after the
+Dedborough.”
+
+“And so awfully _long_ after--wasn’t it?” Lady Grace asked.
+
+“Awfully long after--it was years ago that Pappen-dick, being in this
+country for such purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when none
+of you were there, or at least visible.”
+
+“Oh of course we don’t see _every one!_”--she heroically kept it up.
+
+“You don’t see every one,” Hugh bravely laughed, “and that makes it all
+the more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shall
+really get Bardi,” he pursued, “to go again to Verona----”
+
+“The last thing before coming here?”--she had guessed before he could
+say it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her for
+assent. “How happy they should like so to work for you!”
+
+“Ah, we’re a band of brothers,” he returned--“‘we few, we happy
+few’--from country to country”; to which he added, gaining more ease for
+an eye at Lord Theign: “though we do have our little rubs and disputes,
+like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping
+_interest_ of it all; since,” he developed and explained, for his elder
+friend’s benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially
+at least recovered, “when we’re really ‘hit’ over a case we’ll do almost
+anything in life.”
+
+Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediately
+appropriated what her father let alone. “It must be so lovely to _feel_
+so hit!”
+
+“It does spoil one,” Hugh laughed, “for milder joys. Of course what I
+have to consider is the chance--putting it at the _merest_ chance--of
+Bardi’s own wet blanket! But that’s again so very small--though,” he
+pulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as an
+almost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, “you’ll retort upon me naturally
+that I promised you the possibility of Pappendick’s veto would be: all
+on the poor dear old basis, you’ll claim, of the wish father to the
+thought. Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Only
+give me time!” he sublimely insisted.
+
+“How can we prevent your using it?” Lady Grace again interrupted; “or
+the fact either that if the worst comes to the worst--”
+
+“The thing”--he at once pursued--“will always be at the least the
+greatest of Morettos? Ah,” he cried so cheerily that there was still a
+freedom in it toward any it might concern, “the worst sha’n’t come to
+the worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is that
+supports me in the deep regret I have to express”--and he faced Lord
+Theign again--“for any inconvenience I may have caused you by my
+abortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yet
+more than make up!”
+
+Lord Theign, after the longest but the blankest contemplation of
+him, broke hereupon, for the first time, that attitude of completely
+sustained and separate silence which he had yet made compatible with his
+air of having deeply noted every element of the scene--so that it was of
+this full view his participation had effectively consisted, “I haven’t
+the least idea, sir, what you’re talking about!” And he squarely turned
+his back, strolling toward the other room, the threshold of which he the
+next moment had passed, remaining scantily within, however, and in
+sight of the others, not to say of ourselves; even though averted and
+ostensibly lost in some scrutiny that might have had for its object the
+great enshrined Lawrence.
+
+There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, the
+richest of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided by
+the width of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then used
+for their own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now over
+Hugh’s unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he must
+at once act. Lady Grace’s young arms conveyed to him by a despairing
+contrite motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could do
+in his presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to
+leave the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair,
+for their full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged,
+the charged give and take of their gaze and, it might well have
+been imagined, of their passion. Hugh had for an instant a show of
+hesitation--of the arrested impulse, while he kept her father within
+range, to launch at that personage before going some final remonstrance.
+It was the girl’s raised hand and gesture of warning that waved away
+for him such a mistake; he decided, under her pressure, and after a last
+searching and answering look at her reached the door and let himself
+out. The stillness was then prolonged a minute by the further wait of
+the two others, Lord Theign where he had been standing and his daughter
+on the spot from which she had not moved. It presently ended in his
+lordship’s turn about as if inferring by the silence that the intruder
+had withdrawn.
+
+“Is that young man your lover?” he said as he drew again near.
+
+Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had been
+prepared. “Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short time
+ago demanded of me?”
+
+“It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy
+with him!”
+
+“You mean that if he _should_ be--what you ask me about--your exaction
+would then be modified?”
+
+“My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the
+contrary,” Lord Theign pronounced, “rest on an immense new ground.
+Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth.”
+
+“Won’t the truth be before you, father, if you’ll _think_ a
+moment--without extravagance?” After which, while, as stiffly as
+ever--and it probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly--he didn’t
+rise to it, she went on: “If I _offered_ you not again to see him, does
+that make for you the appearance--?”
+
+“If you offered it, you mean, on your condition--my promising not to
+sell? I promised,” said Lord Theign, “absolutely nothing at all!”
+
+She took him up with all expression. “So I promised as little! But
+that I should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your
+curiosity.”
+
+She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see
+_how_ wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. “You risked
+your offer for the great equivalent over which you’ve so wildly worked
+yourself up.”
+
+“Yes, I’ve worked myself--that, I grant you and don’t blush for! But
+hardly so much as to renounce my ‘lover’--if,” she prodigiously smiled,
+“I were so fortunate as to have one!”
+
+“You renounced poor John mightily easily--whom you were so fortunate as
+to have!”
+
+Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. “Do you call Lord John
+my lover?”
+
+“He was your suitor most assuredly,” Lord Theign inimitably said,
+though without looking at her; “and as strikingly encouraged as he was
+respectfully ardent!”
+
+“Encouraged by _you_, dear father, beyond doubt!”
+
+“Encouraged--er--by every one: because you were (yes, you _were!_)
+encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour as
+to whether you didn’t, on your honour, turn him off because of your just
+then so stimulated views on the person who has been with us.”
+
+Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than she
+could say--moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, by
+other things than harshness: “Oh father, father, father----!”
+
+He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared to
+give way to her sincerity. “Well then if I _have_ your denial I take
+it as answering my whole question--in a manner that satisfies me. If
+there’s nothing, on your word, of that sort between you, you can all the
+more drop him.”
+
+“But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the other
+case--that of there _being_ something!”
+
+He brushed away her logic-chopping. “If you’re so keen then for past
+remarks I take up your own words--I accept your own terms for your
+putting an end to Mr. Crimble.” To which, while, turning pale, she said
+nothing, he added: “You recognise that you profess yourself ready----”
+
+“Not again to see him,” she now answered, “if you tell me the picture’s
+safe? Yes, I recognise that I _was_ ready--as well as how scornfully
+little you then were!”
+
+“Never mind what I then was--the question’s of what I actually am, since
+I close with you on it The picture’s therefore as safe as you please,”
+ Lord Theign pursued, “if you’ll do what you just now engaged to.”
+
+“I engaged to do nothing,” she replied after a pause; and the face she
+turned to him had grown suddenly tragic. “I’ve no word to take back, for
+none passed between us; but I _won’t_ do what I mentioned and what you
+at once laughed at Because,” she finished, “the case is different.”
+
+“Different?” he almost shouted--“_how_, different?”
+
+She didn’t look at him for it, but she was none the less strongly
+distinct “He has _been_ here--and that has done it He knows,” she
+admirably emphasised.
+
+“Knows what I think of him, no doubt--for a brazen young prevaricator!
+But what else?”
+
+She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. “What he will have
+seen--that I feel we’re too good friends.”
+
+“Then your denial of it’s false,” her father fairly thundered--“and you
+_are_ infatuated?”
+
+It made her the more quiet. “I like him very much.”
+
+“So that your row about the picture,” he demanded with passion, “has
+been all a blind?” And then as her quietness still held her: “And his a
+blind as much--to help him to get _at_ you?”
+
+She looked at him again now. “He must speak for himself. I’ve said what
+I mean.”
+
+“But what the devil _do_ you mean?” Lord Theign, taking in the hour, had
+reached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense of
+time lamentably lost.
+
+Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and,
+hurried and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand a
+minute. Then she let everything go. “Do what you like with the picture!”
+
+He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at his
+face, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done with her
+now and immediately lost to sight. Left alone she stood a moment looking
+before her; then with a vague advance, held apparently by a quickly
+growing sense of the implication of her act, reached a table where she
+remained a little, deep afresh in thought--only the next thing to fall
+into a chair close to it and there, with her elbows on it, yield to the
+impulse of covering her flushed face with her hands.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HUGH CRIMBLE waited again in the Bruton Street drawing-room--this time
+at the afternoon hour; he restlessly shifted his place, looked at things
+about him without seeing them; all he saw, all he outwardly studied,
+was his own face and figure as he stopped an instant before a long glass
+suspended between two windows. Just as he turned from that brief and
+perhaps not wholly gratified inspection Lady Grace--that he had sent
+up his name to whom was immediately apparent--presented herself at
+the entrance from the other room. These young persons had hereupon no
+instant exchange of words; their exchange was mute--they but paused
+where they were; while the silence of each evidently tested the other
+for full confidence. A measure of this comfort came first, it would have
+appeared, to Hugh; though he then at once asked for confirmation of it.
+
+“Am I right, Lady Grace, am I right?--to have _come_, I mean, after so
+many days of not hearing, not knowing, and perhaps, all too stupidly,
+not trying.” And he went on as, still with her eyes on him, she didn’t
+speak; though, only, we should have guessed, from her stress of emotion.
+“Even if I’m wrong, let me tell you, I don’t care--simply because,
+whatever new difficulty I may have brought about for you here a
+fortnight ago, there’s something that to-day adds to my doubt and my
+fear too great a pang, and that has made me feel I can scarce bear the
+suspense of them as they are.”
+
+The girl came nearer, and if her grave face expressed a pity it yet
+declined a dread. “Of what suspense do you speak? Your still being
+without the other opinion--?”
+
+“Ah, that worries me, yes; and all the more, at this hour, as I say,
+that--” He dropped it, however: “I’ll tell you in a moment! My _real_
+torment, all the while, has been not to know, from day to day, what
+situation, what complication that last scene of ours with your father
+here has let you in for; and yet at the same time--having no sign nor
+sound from you!--to see the importance of not making anything possibly
+worse by approaching you again, however discreetly. I’ve been in the
+dark,” he pursued, “and feeling that I must leave _you_ there; so that
+now--just brutally turning up once more under personal need and at any
+cost--I don’t know whether I most want or most fear what I may learn
+from you.”
+
+Lady Grace, listening and watching, appeared to choose between different
+ways of meeting this appeal; she had a pacifying, postponing gesture,
+marked with a beautiful authority, a sign of the value for her of what
+she gave precedence to and which waved off everything else. “Have you
+had--first of all--any news yet of Bardi?”
+
+“That I have is what has driven me straight _at_ you again--since I’ve
+shown you before how I turn to you at a crisis. He has come as I hoped
+and like a regular good ‘un,” Hugh was able to state; “I’ve just met
+him at the station, but I pick him up again, at his hotel in Clifford
+Street, at five. He stopped, on his way from Dover this morning, to my
+extreme exasperation, to ‘sample’ Canterbury, and I leave him to a
+bath and a change and tea. Then swooping down I whirl him round to Bond
+Street, where his very first apprehension of the thing (an apprehension,
+oh I guarantee you, so quick and clean and fine and wise) will be the
+flash-light projected--well,” said the young man, to wind up handsomely,
+but briefly and reasonably, “over the whole field of our question.”
+
+She panted with comprehension. “That of the two portraits being but the
+one sitter!”
+
+“That of the two portraits being but the one sitter. With everything so
+to the good, more and more, that bangs in, up to the head, the golden
+nail of authenticity, and”--he quite glowed through his gloom for
+it--“we take our stand in glory on the last Mantovano in the world.”
+
+It was a presumption his friend visibly yearned for--but over which,
+too, with her eyes away from him, she still distinguished the shadow of
+a cloud. “That is if the flash-light comes!”
+
+“That is if it comes indeed, confound it!”--he had to enlarge a little
+under the recall of past experience. “So now, at any rate, you see my
+tension!”
+
+She looked at him again as with a vision too full for a waste of words.
+“While you on your side of course keep well in view Mr. Bender’s.”
+
+“Yes, while I keep well in view Mr. Bender’s; though he doesn’t know,
+you see, of Bardi’s being at hand.”
+
+“Still,” said the girl, always all lucid for the case, “if the
+‘flash-light’ does presently break----!”
+
+“It will first take him in the eye?” Hugh had jumped to her idea, but he
+adopted it only to provide: “It might if he didn’t now wear goggles, so
+to say!--clapped on him too hard by Pappendick’s so damnably perverse
+opinion.” With which, however, he quickly bethought himself. “Ah, of
+course, these wretched days, you haven’t known of Pappendick’s personal
+visit. After that wire from Verona I wired him back defiance--”
+
+“And that brought him?” she cried.
+
+“To do the honest thing, yes--I _will_ say for him: to renew, for full
+assurance, his early memory of our picture.”
+
+She hung upon it. “But only to stick then to what he had telegraphed?”
+
+“To declare that for _him_, lackaday! our thing’s a pure Moretto--and
+to declare as much, moreover, with all the weight of his authority, to
+Bender himself, who of course made a point of seeing him.”
+
+“So that Bender”--she followed and wondered--“is, as a consequence,
+wholly off?”
+
+It made her friend’s humour play up in his acute-ness. “Bender,
+Lady Grace, is, by the law of his being, never ‘wholly’ off--or
+on!--anything. He lives, like the moon, in mid-air, shedding his silver
+light on earth; never quite gone, yet never _all_ there--save for
+inappreciable moments. He _would_ be in eclipse as a peril, I grant,”
+ Hugh went on--“if the question had struck him as really closed. But
+luckily the blessed Press--which is a pure heavenly joy and now quite
+immense on it--keeps it open as wide as Piccadilly.”
+
+“Which makes, however,” Lady Grace discriminated, “for the danger of a
+grab.”
+
+“Ah, but all the more for the shame of a surrender! Of course I admit
+that when it’s a question of a life spent, like his, in waiting,
+acquisitively, for the cat to jump, the only thing for one, at a given
+moment, as against that signal, is to be found one’s self by the animal
+in the line of its trajectory. That’s exactly,” he laughed, “where we
+are!”
+
+She cast about as intelligently to note the place. “Your great idea, you
+mean, _has_ so worked--with the uproar truly as loud as it has seemed to
+come to us here?”
+
+“All beyond my wildest hope,” Hugh returned; “since the sight of the
+picture, flocked to every day by thousands, so beautifully _tells_. That
+we must at any cost keep it, that the nation must, and hang on to it
+tight, is the cry that fills the air--to the tune of ten letters a day
+in the Papers, with every three days a gorgeous leader; to say nothing
+of more and more passionate talk all over the place, some of it awfully
+wild, but all of it wind in our sails.”
+
+“I suppose it was that wind then that blew me round there to see the
+thing in its new light,” Lady Grace said. “But I couldn’t stay--for
+tears!”
+
+“Ah,” Hugh insisted on his side for comfort, “we’ll crow loudest yet!
+And don’t meanwhile, just _don’t_, those splendid strange eyes of the
+fellow seem consciously to plead? The women, bless them, adore him,
+cling to him, and there’s talk of a ‘Ladies’ League of Protest’--all of
+which keeps up the pitch.”
+
+“Poor Amy and I are a ladies’ league,” the girl joylessly joked--“as we
+now take in the ‘Journal’ regardless of expense.”
+
+“Oh then you practically _have_ it all--since,” Hugh, added after
+a brief hesitation, “I suppose Lord Theign himself doesn’t languish
+uninformed.”
+
+“At far-off Salsomaggiore--by the papers? No doubt indeed he isn’t
+spared even the worst,” said Lady Grace--“and no doubt too it’s a drag
+on his cure.”
+
+Her companion seemed struck with her lack of assurance. “Then you
+don’t--if I may ask--hear from him?”
+
+“I? Never a word.”
+
+“He doesn’t write?” Hugh allowed himself to insist.
+
+“He doesn’t write. And I don’t write either.”
+
+“And Lady Sandgate?” Hugh once more ventured.
+
+“Doesn’t _she_ write?”
+
+“Doesn’t _she_ hear?” said the young man, treating the other form of the
+question as a shade evasive.
+
+“I’ve asked her not to tell me,” his friend replied--“that is if he
+simply holds out.”
+
+“So that as she doesn’t tell you”--Hugh was clear for the inference--“he
+of course does hold out.” To which he added almost accusingly while his
+eyes searched her: “But your case is really bad.”
+
+She confessed to it after a moment, but as if vaguely enjoying it. “My
+case is really bad.”
+
+He had a vividness of impatience and contrition. 197
+
+“And it’s I who--all too blunderingly!--have made it so?”
+
+“I’ve made it so myself,” she said with a high head-shake, “and you, on
+the contrary--!” But here she checked her emphasis.
+
+“Ah, I’ve so _wanted_, through our horrid silence, to help you!” And he
+pressed to get more at the truth. “You’ve so quite fatally displeased
+him?”
+
+“To the last point--as I tell you. But it’s not to that I refer,” she
+explained; “it’s to the ground of complaint I’ve given _you_.” And then
+as this but left him blank, “It’s time--it was at once time--that you
+should know,” she pursued; “and yet if it’s hard for me to speak, as you
+see, it was impossible for me to write. But there it is.” She made her
+sad and beautiful effort. “The last thing before he left us I let the
+picture go.”
+
+“You mean--?” But he could only wonder--till, however, it glimmered upon
+him. “You gave up your protest?”
+
+“I gave up my protest. I told him that--so far as I’m concerned!--he
+might do as he liked.”
+
+Her poor friend turned pale at the sharp little shock of it; but if his
+face thus showed the pang of too great a surprise he yet wreathed the
+convulsion in a gay grimace. “You leave me to struggle alone?”
+
+“I leave you to struggle alone.”
+
+He took it in bewilderingly, but tried again, even to the heroic,
+for optimism. “Ah well, you decided, I suppose, on some new personal
+ground.”
+
+“Yes; a reason came up, a reason I hadn’t to that extent looked for
+and which of a sudden--quickly, before he went--I _had_ somehow to deal
+with. So to give him my word in the dismal sense I mention was my only
+way to meet the strain.” She paused; Hugh waited for something further,
+and “I gave him my word I wouldn’t help you,” she wound up.
+
+He turned it over. “To _act_ in the matter--I see.”
+
+“To act in the matter”--she went through with it--“after the high stand
+I had taken.”
+
+Still he studied it. “I see--I see. It’s between you and your father.”
+
+“It’s between him and me--yes. An engagement not again to trouble him.”
+
+Hugh, from his face, might have feared a still greater complication; so
+he made, as he would probably have said, a jolly lot of this. “Ah, that
+was nice of you. And natural. _That’s_ all right!”
+
+“No”--she spoke from a deeper depth--“it’s altogether wrong. For
+whatever happens I must now accept it.”
+
+“Well, say you must”--he really declined not to treat it almost as
+rather a “lark”--“if we can at least go on talking.”
+
+“Ah, we _can_ at least go on talking!” she perversely sighed. “I can say
+anything I like so long as I don’t say it to _him_” she almost wailed.
+But she added with more firmness: “I can still hope--and I can still
+pray.”
+
+He set free again with a joyous gesture all his confidence. “Well, what
+more _could_ you do, anyhow? So isn’t that enough?”
+
+It took her a moment to say, and even then she didn’t. “Is it enough for
+_you_, Mr. Crimble?”
+
+“What _is_ enough for me”--he could for his part readily name it--“is
+the harm done you at our last meeting by my irruption; so that if you
+got his consent to see me----!”
+
+“I didn’t get his consent!”--she had turned away from the searching
+eyes, but she faced them again to rectify: “I see you against his
+express command.”
+
+“Ah then thank God I came!”--it was like a bland breath on a _feu de
+joie_: he flamed so much higher.
+
+“Thank God you’ve come, yes--for my deplorable exposure.” And to justify
+her name for it before he could protest, “I _offered_ him here not to
+see you,” she rigorously explained.
+
+“‘Offered him?”--Hugh did drop for it. “Not to see me--ever again?”
+
+She didn’t falter. “Never again.”
+
+Ah then he understood. “But he wouldn’t let that serve----?”
+
+“Not for the price I put on it.”
+
+“His yielding on the picture?”
+
+“His yielding on the picture.”
+
+Hugh lingered before it all. “Your proposal wasn’t ‘good enough’?”
+
+“It wasn’t good enough.”
+
+“I see,” he repeated--“I see.” But he was in that light again mystified.
+“Then why are you therefore not free?”
+
+“Because--just after--you came back, and I _did_ see you again!”
+
+Ah, it was all present. “You found you were too sorry for me?”
+
+“I found I was too sorry for you--as he himself found I was.”
+
+Hugh had got hold of it now. “And _that_, you mean, he couldn’t
+stomach?”
+
+“So little that when you had gone (and _how_ you had to go you remember)
+he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a way so
+different from his own----”
+
+“To do all we want of him?”
+
+“To do all I did at least.”
+
+“And it was _then_,” he took in, “that you wouldn’t deal?”
+
+“Well”--try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came
+straighter and straighter now--“those moments had brought you home to
+me as they had also brought _him_; making such a difference, I felt, for
+what he veered round to agree to.”
+
+“The difference”--Hugh wanted it so adorably definite--“that you didn’t
+see your way to accepting----?”
+
+“No, not to accepting the condition he named.”
+
+“Which was that he’d keep the picture for you if you’d treat me as too
+‘low’----?”
+
+“If I’d treat you,” said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young
+face, “as impossible.”
+
+He kept her eyes--he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. “And
+not even for the sake of the picture--?” After he had given her time,
+however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish
+him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told
+him didn’t make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He _had_ it, and
+let her see by his high flush how he made it his own--while, the next
+thing, as it was but part of her avowal, the rest of that illumination
+called for a different intelligence. “Your father’s reprobation of me
+personally is on the ground that you’re all such great people?”
+
+She spared him the invidious answer to this as, a moment before, his
+eagerness had spared her reserve; she flung over the “ground” that his
+question laid bare the light veil of an evasion, “‘Great people,’ I’ve
+learned to see, mustn’t--to remain great--do what my father’s doing.”
+
+“It’s indeed on the theory of their not so behaving,” Hugh returned,
+“that we see them--all the inferior rest of us--in the grand glamour of
+their greatness!”
+
+If he had spoken to meet her admirable frankness half-way, that beauty
+in her almost brushed him aside to make at a single step the rest of the
+journey. “You won’t see them in it for long--if they don’t now, under
+such tests and with such opportunities, begin to take care.”
+
+This had given him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the
+closer criticism. “Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth,
+but ‘takes care,’ with the least trouble to himself and the finest short
+cut--does it, if you’ll let me say so, rather on the cheap--by finding
+‘the likes’ of me, as his daughter’s trusted friend, out of the
+question.”
+
+“Well, you won’t mind that, will you?” Lady Grace asked, “if he finds
+his daughter herself, in any such relation to you, quite as much so.”
+
+“Different enough, from position to position and person to person,” he
+brightly brooded, “is the view that gets itself _most_ comfortably taken
+of the implications of Honour!”
+
+“Yes,” the girl returned; “my father, in the act of despoiling us
+all, all who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant
+consciousness, keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine,
+so delicate sense, by suddenly discovering that he’s scandalised at my
+caring for your friendship.”
+
+Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession
+promised and only waiting--or as if from that moment forth he had her
+assurance of everything that most concerned him and that might
+most inspire. “Well, isn’t the moral of it all simply that what his
+perversity of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us
+is to bring us--and to keep us--blessedly together?”
+
+She seemed for a moment to question his “simply.” “Do you regard us as
+so much ‘together’ when you remember where, in spite of everything, I’ve
+put myself?”
+
+“By telling him to do what he likes?” he recalled without embarrassment.
+“Oh, that wasn’t in spite of ‘everything’--it was only in spite of the
+Manto-vano.”
+
+“‘Only’?” she flushed--“when I’ve given the picture up?”
+
+“Ah,” Hugh cried, “I don’t care a hang for the picture!” And then as she
+let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands:
+“We both only care, don’t we, that we’re given to each other thus? We
+both only care, don’t we, that nothing can keep us apart?”
+
+“Oh, if you’ve forgiven me--!” she sighed into his fond face.
+
+“Why, since you gave the thing up _for_ me,” he pleadingly laughed, “it
+isn’t as if you had given _me_ up----!”
+
+“For anything, anything? Ah never, never!” she breathed.
+
+“Then why aren’t we all right?”
+
+“Well, if you will----!”
+
+“Oh for ever and ever and ever!”--and with this ardent cry of his
+devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his
+breast and to his lips.
+
+The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning “Amy
+Sandgate!”--as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room. Lady
+Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them--their disjunction had
+scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer threshold. They
+had at once put the widest space possible between them--a little of
+the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch at
+composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one side
+and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a few
+moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of;
+from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt
+and responsible address to Hugh. “Mustn’t you go without more delay to
+Clifford Street?”
+
+He came back to it all alert “At once!” He had recovered his hat and
+reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder
+lady. “Please pardon me”--and he disappeared.
+
+Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the
+girl. “Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father’s suddenly
+at hand?”
+
+“He has come back?”--Lady Grace was sharply struck.
+
+“He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to
+Kitty--according to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back
+late from my luncheon. He has returned with a rush--as,” said his
+correspondent in the elation of triumph, “I was _sure_ he would!”
+
+Her young friend was more at sea. “Brought back, you mean, by the
+outcry--even though he so hates it?”
+
+But she was more and more all lucidity--save in so far as she was now
+almost all authority. “Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come
+back to face the music!”
+
+Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which
+the music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to
+a positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride.
+“Yes--that’s dear old father!”
+
+And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject?
+“At the point the row has reached he couldn’t stand it another day; so
+he has thrown up his cure and--lest we should oppose him!--not even
+announced his start.”
+
+“Well,” her companion returned, “now that I’ve _done_ it all I shall
+never oppose him again!”
+
+Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she
+might have received on entering. “He’ll only oppose _you!_”
+
+“If he does,” said Lady Grace, “we’re at present two to bear it.”
+
+“Heaven save us then”--the elder woman was quick, was even cordial, for
+the sense of this--“your good friend _is_ clever!”
+
+Lady Grace honoured the remark. “Mr. Crim-ble’s remarkably clever.”
+
+“And you’ve arranged----?”
+
+“We haven’t arranged--but we’ve understood. So that, dear Amy, if _you_
+understand--!” Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the hall.
+
+“His lordship has arrived?” his mistress immediately put to him.
+
+“No, my lady, but Lord John has--to know if he’s expected _here_, and in
+that case, by your ladyship’s leave, to come up.”
+
+Her ladyship turned to the girl. “May Lord John--as we do await your
+father--come up?”
+
+“As suits _you_, please!”
+
+“He may come up,” said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. “His lordship’s
+expected.” She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went
+on to her companion: “You asked me just now if I understood. Well--I do
+understand!”
+
+Lady Grace, with Gotch’s withdrawal, which left the door open, had
+reached the passage to the other room. “Then you’ll excuse me!”--she
+made her escape.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter and
+quite waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of his
+eagerness and tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. “What
+on earth then do you suppose he has come back to _do_--?” To which he
+added while his hostess’s gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture:
+“Because when a fellow really finds himself the centre of a
+cyclone----!”
+
+“Isn’t it just at the centre,” she interrupted, “that you keep
+remarkably still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I
+count on dear Theign’s doing nothing in the least foolish--!”
+
+“Ah, but he can’t have chucked everything for nothing,” Lord John
+sharply returned; “and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can’t
+not meet somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a great
+nobleman and good citizen.”
+
+“It’s his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the
+scapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!” Lady
+Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
+
+“Yes,” Lord John concluded for her, “the mercenary millions on whose
+traffic in their trumpery values--when they’re so lucky as to have
+any!--_this_ isn’t a patch!”
+
+“Oh, there are cases _and_ cases: situations and responsibilities so
+intensely differ!”--that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the
+moral to be gathered.
+
+“Of course everything differs, all round, from everything,” Lord John
+went on; “and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the
+victim of circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest
+motives, to be literally torn to pieces?”
+
+“Well,” said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshly
+consulted her bracelet watch, “I hope he isn’t already torn--if you tell
+me you’ve been to Kitty’s.”
+
+“Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again,” the
+young man explained, “as Lady Imber hadn’t been at home.”
+
+“Ah cool Kitty!” his hostess sighed again--but diverted, as she spoke,
+by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding Lord
+Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb
+of travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearning
+tenderness and compassionate curiosity. “At last, dearest friend--what a
+joy! But with Kitty not at home to receive you?”
+
+That young woman’s parent made light of it for the indulged creature’s
+sake. “Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty.”
+ To which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord
+John: “But Bender, who came there before my arrival--he hasn’t tried for
+me here?”
+
+It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive.
+“I met him at the club at luncheon; he had had your letter--but for
+which chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You’ll see him
+all right at this house; but I’m glad, if I may say so, Theign,” the
+speaker pursued with some emphasis--“I’m glad, you know, to get hold of
+you first.”
+
+Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but his
+other companion’s apprehension had already overflowed. “You haven’t come
+back, have you--to whatever it may be!--for _trouble_ of any sort with
+Breckenridge?”
+
+His lordship transferred his penetration to this fair friend, “Have
+you become so intensely absorbed--these remarkable days!--in
+‘Breckenridge’?”
+
+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 Lord John--“three extraordinarily vulgar pages about the egregious
+Pap-pendick!”
+
+“About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, as
+Breckenridge says, marked the picture down?”--the young man was clearly
+all-knowing. “That _has_ of course weighed on Bender--being confirmed
+apparently, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion.”
+
+Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some of
+his friend’s terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the
+babbler or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. “He too
+has known me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of ‘the drift of
+public opinion’!” After which he quite charged at his vain informant.
+“Am I to tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of public
+opinion?--which is but another name for the chatter of all the fools one
+doesn’t know, in addition to all those (and plenty of ‘em!) one damnably
+does.”
+
+Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse.
+“Ah, you did _that_, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!”
+
+“I don’t speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on
+_you_,” Lord John importantly explained--“but in the light of its effect
+on Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he _is_ to have it,
+to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last for anything
+but the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been.”
+
+Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication,
+betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptly
+restored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action.
+“Well, isn’t a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?”
+
+It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. “A fine old
+Moretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough--for its
+comparative, strictly comparative, insignificance; and he only thought
+of the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity--”
+
+“That that mendacious young cad who has bamboozled Grace,” Lord Theign
+broke in, “tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claiming
+for it?”
+
+Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. “Ah, the knowing people
+haven’t had their last word--the possible Mantovano isn’t exploded
+_yet!_” Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. “I’ve
+had enough of the knowing people--the knowing people are serpents! My
+picture’s to take or to leave--and it’s what I’ve come back, if you
+please, John, to say to your man to his face.”
+
+This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as the
+successive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smoke
+cleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing and smiling.
+“Yes, why in mercy’s name can’t he choose _which?_--and why does he
+write him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome argumentative letters?”
+
+Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had been
+working in him rather vehemently, though under due caution too, as a
+consequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively watched
+his elder. “I don’t think I quite see _how_, my dear Theign, the poor
+chap’s letter was so offensive.”
+
+In that case his dear Theign could tell him. “Because it was a tissue
+of expressions that may pass current--over counters and in awful
+newspapers--in _his_ extraordinary world or country, but that I decline
+to take time to puzzle out here.”
+
+“If he didn’t make himself understood,” Lord John took leave to laugh,
+“it must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender.”
+
+“Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his
+turns, haven’t a notion,” Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety,
+“of what he’s talking about.”
+
+“I think I never miss his weird sense,” her younger guest again loyally
+contended--“and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!”
+
+“I happen to like nothing that I don’t enjoy,” Lord Theign rejoined with
+some asperity--“and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my
+part an interest in his expenditure of purchase-money that I neither
+feel nor pretend to. He doesn’t want--by what I spell out--the picture
+he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want--if one reads it so--the
+picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with great
+emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two ‘articles’ (the
+greatest of Morettos an ‘article’!) haven’t been ‘by now’ proved
+different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove them!”
+
+Lord John indulged in a pause--but also in a suggestion. “He must
+allude to your hoping--when you allowed us to place the picture with
+Mackintosh--that it would show to all London in the most precious light
+conceivable.”
+
+“Well, if it hasn’t so shown”--and Lord Theign stared as if
+mystified--“what in the world’s the meaning of this preposterous
+racket?”
+
+“The racket is largely,” his young friend explained, “the vociferation
+of the people who contradict each other about it.”
+
+On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question.
+“Some--yes--shouting on the housetops that’s a Mantovano of the
+Mantovanos, and others shrieking back at them that they’re donkeys if
+not criminals.”
+
+“He may take it for whatever he likes,” said Lord Theign, heedless of
+these contributions, “he may father it on Michael Angelo himself if
+he’ll but clear out with it and let me alone!”
+
+“What he’d _like_ to take it for,” Lord John at this point saw his way
+to remark, “is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand.”
+
+“A Hundred Thousand?” cried his astonished friend.
+
+“Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand”--the young man enjoyed clearly
+handling even by the lips so round a sum.
+
+Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility any appearance of having
+gaped. “Why, haven’t you yet realised, Theign, that those are the
+American figures?”
+
+His lordship looked at her fixedly and then did the same by Lord John,
+after which he waited a little. “I’ve nothing to do with the American
+figures--which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite intolerably
+vulgar.”
+
+“Well, I’d be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!” Lady
+Sandgate hastened to proclaim.
+
+“Didn’t he let us know at Dedborough,” Lord John asked of the master of
+that seat, “that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?”
+
+“I’ve heard him remark myself,” said their companion, rising to the
+monstrous memory, “that he wouldn’t take a cheap picture--even though a
+‘handsome’ one--as a present.”
+
+“And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?” the
+proprietor of the work demanded.
+
+Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience. “All he wants to
+do, don’t you see? is to prevent your _making_ it one!”
+
+Lord Theign glared at this imputation to him of a low ductility. “I
+offered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy of it--and of _me_.”
+
+“My dear reckless friend,” his young adviser protested, “you named no
+figure _at all_ when it came to the point----!”
+
+“It _didn’t_ come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I put
+a Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly”--Lord Theign accepted the
+reminding gesture--“on which a rich American had an eye and in which he
+had, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and so we left
+it--parting each of us ready but neither of us bound.”
+
+“Ah, Mr. Bender’s bound, as he’d say,” Lady Sand-gate
+interposed--“‘bound’ to make you swallow the enormous luscious plum that
+your appetite so morbidly rejects!”
+
+“My appetite, as morbid as you like”--her old friend had shrewdly turned
+on her--“is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in enormities I
+warn him to carry them elsewhere!”
+
+Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated at the absurdity
+of him. “But how can’t you see that it’s only a plum, as she says, for
+a plum and an eye for an eye--since the picture itself, with this huge
+ventilation, is now quite a different affair?”
+
+“How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himself
+confesses is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants,
+there’s no really established ground for treating it as anything but
+the same?” On which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shook
+himself free again, in his high petulance, and moved restlessly to where
+the passage to the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; all
+moreover to the effect of suggesting to us that something still other
+than what he had said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneath
+that quantity. The spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time,
+in uncertainty and with a mute but associated comment on the perversity
+and oddity he had so suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug of
+almost bored despair and Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact for
+their action by a finger flourished to her lips, and in fact at once
+proceeding to apply these arts. The subject of her attention had still
+remained as in worried thought; he had even mechanically taken up a book
+from a table--which he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
+
+“You’re so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer,” she began--“and
+unless you stick to _that_ you might as well have done nothing. What
+you call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly
+what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to
+be _allowed_ to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers
+haven’t settled anything for those who know--though which of the elect
+themselves after all _does_ seem to know?--it’s a great service rendered
+him to have started such a hare to run!”
+
+Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. “Certainly
+his connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end for
+his glory.”
+
+It didn’t, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least
+made his indifference flash with derision. “His ‘glory’--Mr. Bender’s
+glory? Why, they quite universally loathe him--judging by the stuff they
+print!”
+
+“Oh, here--as a corrupter of our morals and a promoter of our decay,
+even though so many are flat on their faces to him--yes! But it’s
+another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand
+steam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest:
+_there_ he’ll be, if you’ll only let him, the biggest thing going; since
+sound, in that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts.
+If he said of the thing, as you recognise,” Lord John went on, “‘It’s
+going to be a Mantovano,’ why you can bet your life that it _is_--that
+it has _got_ to be some kind of a one.”
+
+His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would
+have been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair--worked up
+to something quite openly wilful and passionate. “No kind of a furious
+flaunting one, under _my_ patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The
+Dedborough picture in the market--owing to horrid little circumstances
+that regard myself alone--is the Dedborough picture at a decent,
+sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which
+I beg you will take as my last word on the subject.”
+
+Lord John, trying whether he _could_ take it, momentarily mingled his
+hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless
+look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only
+reassert himself. “May I nevertheless reply that I think you’ll not be
+able to prevent _anything?_--since the discussed object will completely
+escape your control in New York!”
+
+“And almost any discussed object”--Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion
+also--“is in New York, by what one hears, easily _worth_ a Hundred
+Thousand!”
+
+Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. “I sell the man a
+Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent
+swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?”
+
+“Well”--Lord John was but briefly baffled--“when the picture’s his you
+can’t help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!”
+
+“Then it isn’t his yet,” the elder man retorted--“and I promise you
+never will be if he has _sent_ you to me with his big drum!”
+
+Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as
+if the case were now really beyond them. “Yes, how indeed can it ever
+_become_ his if Theign simply won’t let him pay for it?”
+
+Her question was unanswerable. “It’s the first time in all my life I’ve
+known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening
+_not_ to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!”
+
+“Theign is unable to take it in,” her ladyship explained, “that--as I’ve
+heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type--Bender simply
+can’t _afford_ not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer who
+ever lived.”
+
+“Ah, cited and celebrated at my _expense_--say it at once and have it
+over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!”
+
+“The dear man’s inimitable--at his ‘expense’!” It was more than Lord
+John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence
+and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
+
+“Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean,” Lord Theign
+asseverated--“at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour
+by my own standards. There you perfectly _are_ about the man, and it’s
+precisely what I say--that he’s to hustle and harry me _because_ he’s a
+money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand,
+when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource at
+Dedborough. I didn’t put my property on view that _he_ might blow about
+it------!”
+
+“No, if you like it,” Lady Sandgate returned; “but you certainly didn’t
+so arrange”--she seemed to think her point somehow would help--“that
+you might blow about it yourself!”
+
+“Nobody wants to ‘blow,’” Lord John more stoutly interposed, “either hot
+or cold, I take it; but I really don’t see the harm of Bender’s liking
+to be known for the scale of his transactions--actual or merely imputed
+even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent.”
+
+Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. “The only
+question perhaps is why he doesn’t try for some precious work that
+somebody--less delicious than dear Theign--_can_ be persuaded on bended
+knees to accept a hundred thousand for.”
+
+“‘Try’ for one?”--her younger visitor took it up while her elder more
+attentively watched him. “That was exactly what he did try for when he
+pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua.”
+
+“Oh well, he mustn’t come back to _that_--must he, Theign?” her ladyship
+cooed.
+
+That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious
+apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed
+himself. “Besides which there _are_ no things of that magnitude knocking
+about, don’t you know?--they’ve _got_ to be worked up first if they’re
+to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind,” he
+continued to his noble monitor, “an agreement on some such basis as
+_this_?--that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you’ll
+squeamishly consent to take, if it’s at the same time the smallest he’ll
+squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him
+free----”
+
+Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion
+only waited. “Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum
+taken as practically one and the same?”
+
+“Ah, you know,” Lord John discriminated, “he doesn’t ‘talk’ so much
+himself--there’s really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It’s
+the rate at which--by the very way he’s ‘fixed’: an awful way indeed, I
+grant you!--a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at his heels, are
+always talking for him and of him.”
+
+Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that
+had been slowly gathering force. “_You_ talk for him, my dear chap,
+pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assured
+of a commission on the job--on a fine ascending scale! Has he put you
+up to that proposition, eh? _Do_ you get a handsome percentage and _are_
+you to make a good thing of it?”
+
+The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry--whether from a
+good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise
+showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch.
+“As he’s to come to you himself--and I don’t know why the mischief he
+doesn’t come!--he will answer you that graceful question.”
+
+“Will he answer it,” Lord Theign asked, “with the veracity that
+the suggestion you’ve just made on his behalf represents him as so
+beautifully adhering to?” On which he again quite fiercely turned his
+back and recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a
+blanker dismay.
+
+Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. “I don’t see why
+you should speak as if I were urging some abomination.”
+
+“Then I’ll tell you why!”--and Lord Theign was upon him again for the
+purpose. “Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright and
+for good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the
+interest of such equivocations!”
+
+Lady Sandgate’s dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently
+in turn to her amusement. “‘Give it away,’ my dear friend, to a man who
+only longs to smother you in gold?”
+
+Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. “Give it
+away--just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter--to some
+cause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender’s power of sound and
+his splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the
+Thingumbob, to the Nation!”
+
+Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and
+stupefied. “Ah, my dear creature, you’ve flights of extravagance----!”
+
+“One thing’s very certain,” Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued--“that
+the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my
+nerves, more and more every minute that I’m conscious of it; so that,
+hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn’t I, for my relief, do again,
+damme, _what I like_?--that is bang the door in their faces, have the
+show immediately stopped?” He turned with the attraction of this idea
+from one of his listeners to the other. “It’s _my_ show--it isn’t
+Bender’s, surely!--and I can do just as I choose with it.”
+
+“Ah, but isn’t that the very point?”--and Lady Sandgate put it to Lord
+John. “Isn’t it Bender’s show much more than his?”
+
+Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of
+disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly--while Lord Theign, on
+the other hand, followed up his happy thought. “Then if it’s Bender’s
+show, or if he claims it is, there’s all the more reason!” And it took
+his lordship’s inspiration no longer to flower. “See here, John--do
+this: go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to
+shut straight down!”
+
+“‘Shut straight down’?” the young man abhorrently echoed.
+
+“Stop it _to-night_--wind it up and end it: see?” The more the
+entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly
+took on for him. “Have the picture removed from view and the incident
+closed.”
+
+“You seriously ask _that_ of me!” poor Lord John quavered.
+
+“Why in the world shouldn’t I? It’s a jolly lot less than you asked of
+me a month ago at Dedborough.”
+
+“What then am I to say to them?” Lord John spoke but after a long
+moment, during which he had only looked hard and--an observer might even
+then have felt--ominously at his taskmaster.
+
+That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. “Say
+anything that comes into your clever head. I don’t really see that
+there’s anything else _for_ you!” Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger,
+who gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
+
+The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; then
+he eyed his friend significantly--almost portentously. “Those are
+absolutely your sentiments?”
+
+“Those are absolutely my sentiments”--and Lord Theign brought this out
+as with the force of a physical push.
+
+“Very well then!” But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly
+sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the
+extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. “Not one more day?”
+
+Lord Theign only waved him away. “Not one more hour!”
+
+He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme
+protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the
+two pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance,
+he clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed on
+his mission.
+
+
+
+
+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 thought--he wondered; and then as if fairly amused at
+himself: “Hanged if I know what _is_ my own price!” After which he went
+for his hat. “But there’s one thing,” he remembered as he came back with
+it: “where’s my too, _too_ unnatural daughter?”
+
+“If you mean Grace and really want her I’ll send and find out.”
+
+“Not now”--he bethought himself. “But does she _see_ that chatterbox?”
+
+“Mr. Crimble? Yes, she sees him.”
+
+He kept his eyes on her. “Then how far has it gone?”
+
+Lady Sandgate overcame an embarrassment. “Well, not even yet, I think,
+so far as they’d like.”
+
+“They’d ‘like’--heaven save the mark!--to marry?”
+
+“I suspect them of it. What line, if it should come to that,” she asked,
+“would you then take?”
+
+He was perfectly prompt. “The line that for Grace it’s simply ignoble.”
+
+The force of her deprecation of such language was qualified by tact.
+“Ah, darling, as dreadful as _that?_”
+
+He could but view the possibility with dark resentment. “It lets us so
+down--from what we’ve always been and done; so down, down, down that I’m
+amazed you don’t feel it!”
+
+“Oh, I feel there’s still plenty to keep you up!” she soothingly
+laughed.
+
+He seemed to consider this vague amount--which he apparently judged,
+however, not so vast as to provide for the whole yearning of his nature.
+“Well, my dear,” he thus more blandly professed, “I shall need all the
+extra _agrément_ that your affection can supply.”
+
+If nothing could have been, on this, richer response, nothing could
+at the same time have bee more pleasing than her modesty. “Ah, my
+affectionate Theign, is, as I think you know, a fountain always in
+flood; but in any more worldly element than that--as you’ve ever seen
+for yourself--a poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not
+‘great’ as they used so finely to call it! You _are_--with the natural
+sense of greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man
+doing and taking things.”
+
+He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for
+the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. “If you mean that I hold
+up my head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much
+longer possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the
+name of goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them,
+and is it really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her
+license and a specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I’m in
+danger of helplessly to swallow the dose?”
+
+“Do you find Mr. Crimble,” Lady Sandgate as if there might really be
+something to say, “so utterly out of the question?”
+
+“I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree
+offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one’s poor dear
+decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would
+forbid _that_ kind of relation.”
+
+What kind of relation, if any, Hugh’s deficiencies might still render
+thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of
+Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether assured
+sound of “Mr. Breckenridge Bender.” The guest in possession gave a cry
+of impatience, but Lady Sandgate said “Coming up?”
+
+“If his lordship will see him.”
+
+“Oh, he’s beyond his time,” his lordship pronounced--“I can’t see him
+now!”
+
+“Ah, but _mustn’t_ you--and mayn’t _I_ then?” She waited, however, for
+no response to signify to her servant “Let him come,” and her companion
+could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he wondered
+at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a little
+that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. “Does the kind of relation
+you’d be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down, as you
+say, more than the relation you’ve been having with Mr. Bender?”
+
+Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. “Do you mean
+don’t I hate ‘em equally both?”
+
+She cut his further reply short, however, by a “Hush!” of warning--Mr.
+Bender was there and his introducer had left them.
+
+Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon
+little to ceremony. “I’ve but a moment, to my regret, to give you, Mr.
+Bender, and if you’ve been unavoidably detained, as you great bustling
+people are so apt to be, it will perhaps still be soon enough for
+your comfort to hear from me that I’ve just given order to close our
+exhibition. From the present hour on, sir”--he put it with the firmness
+required to settle the futility of an appeal.
+
+Mr. Bender’s large surprise lost itself, however, promptly enough,
+in Mr. Bender’s larger ease. “Why, do you really mean it, Lord
+Theign?--removing already from view a work that gives innocent
+gratification to thousands?”
+
+“Well,” said his lordship curtly, “if thousands have seen it I’ve done
+what I wanted, and if they’ve been gratified I’m content--and invite
+_you_ to be.”
+
+Mr. Bender showed more keenness for this richer implication. “In other
+words it’s I who may remove the picture?”
+
+“Well--if you’ll take it on my estimate.”
+
+“But what, Lord Theign, all this time,” Mr. Bender almost pathetically
+pleaded, “_is_ your estimate?”
+
+The parting guest had another pause, which prolonged itself, after
+he had reached the door, in a deep solicitation of their hostess’s
+conscious eyes. This brief passage apparently inspired his answer. “Lady
+Sandgate will tell you.” The door closed behind him.
+
+The charming woman smiled then at her other friend, whose comprehensive
+presence appeared now to demand of her some account of these strange
+proceedings. “He means that your own valuation is much too shockingly
+high.”
+
+“But how can I know _how_ much unless I find out what he’ll take?”
+ The great collector’s spirit had, in spite of its volume, clearly not
+reached its limit of expansion. “Is he crazily waiting for the thing to
+be proved _not_ what Mr. Crimble claims?”
+
+“No, he’s waiting for nothing--since he holds that claim demolished by
+Pappendick’s tremendous negative, which you wrote to tell him of.”
+
+Vast, undeveloped and suddenly grave, Mr. Bender’s countenance showed
+like a barren tract under a black cloud. “I wrote to _report_, fair and
+square, on Pap-pendick, but to tell him I’d take the picture just the
+same, negative and all.”
+
+“Ah, but take it in that way not for what it is but for what it isn’t.”
+
+“We know nothing about what it ‘isn’t,’” said Mr. Bender, “after all
+that has happened--we’ve only learned a little better every day what it
+is.”
+
+“You mean,” his companion asked, “the biggest bone of artistic
+contention----?”
+
+“Yes,”--he took it from her--“the biggest that has been thrown into the
+arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for _that_.”
+
+Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance;
+it was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.
+“Well, if it’s the biggest bone I won’t touch it; I’ll leave it to be
+mauled by my betters. But since his lordship has asked me to name a
+price, dear Mr. Bender, I’ll name one--and as you prefer big prices I’ll
+try to make it suit you. Only it won’t be for the portrait of a person
+nobody is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my
+great-grandmother.”
+
+“Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!”--and her visitor turned from her with the
+hunch of overcharged shoulders.
+
+But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such
+a conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. “You’ve
+been delivered into my hands--too charmingly; and you won’t really
+pretend that you don’t recognise that and in fact rather like it.”
+
+He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness
+unparalleled--though indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the
+question of whether he had been artfully practised upon; an indifference
+to bad debts or peculation like that of some huge hotel or other
+business involving a margin for waste. He could afford, he could work
+waste too, clearly--and what was it, that term, you might have felt him
+ask, but a mean measure, anyway? quite as the “artful,” opposed to his
+larger game, would be the hiding and pouncing of children at play. “Do
+I gather that those uncanny words of his were just meant to put me
+off?” he inquired. And then as she but boldly and smilingly shrugged,
+repudiating responsibility, “Look here, Lady Sandgate, ain’t you
+honestly going to help me?” he pursued.
+
+This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. “Mr. Bender,
+Mr. Bender, I’ll help you if you’ll help _me!_”
+
+“You’ll really get me something from him to go on with?”
+
+“I’ll get you something from him to go on with.”
+
+“That’s all I ask--to get _that_. Then I can move the way I want. But
+without it I’m held up.”
+
+“You shall have it,” she replied, “if I in turn may look to _you_ for a
+trifle on account.”
+
+“Well,” he dryly gloomed at her, “what do you call a trifle?”
+
+“I mean”--she waited but an instant--“what you would feel as one.”
+
+“That won’t do. You haven’t the least idea, Lady Sandgate,” he earnestly
+said, “_how_ I feel at these foolish times. I’ve never got used to them
+yet.”
+
+“Ah, don’t you understand,” she pressed, “that if I give you an
+advantage I’m completely at your mercy?”
+
+“Well, what mercy,” he groaned, “do you deserve?”
+
+She waited a little, brightly composed--then she indicated her inner
+shrine, the whereabouts of her precious picture. “Go and look at her
+again and you’ll see.”
+
+His protest was large, but so, after a moment, was his compliance--his
+heavy advance upon the other room, from just within the doorway of which
+the great Lawrence was serenely visible. Mr. Bender gave it his eyes
+once more--though after the fashion verily of a man for whom it had now
+no freshness of a glamour, no shade of a secret; then he came back to
+his hostess. “Do you call giving me an advantage squeezing me by your
+sweet modesty for less than I may possibly bear?”
+
+“How can I say fairer,” she returned, “than that, with my backing about
+the other picture, which I’ve passed you my word for, thrown in, I’ll
+resign myself to whatever you may be disposed--characteristically!--to
+give for this one.”
+
+“If it’s a question of resignation,” said Mr. Bender, “you mean of
+course what I may be disposed--characteristically!--_not_ to give.”
+
+She played on him for an instant all her radiance. “Yes then, you dear
+sharp rich thing!”
+
+“And you take in, I assume,” he pursued, “that I’m just going to lean on
+you, for what I want, with the full weight of a determined man.”
+
+“Well,” she laughed, “I promise you I’ll thoroughly obey the direction
+of your pressure.”
+
+“All right then!” And he stopped before her, in his unrest, monumentally
+pledged, yet still more massively immeasurable. “How’ll you have it?”
+
+She bristled as with all the possible beautiful choices; then she shed
+her selection as a heaving fruit-tree might have dropped some round
+ripeness. It was for her friend to pick up his plum and his privilege.
+“Will you write a cheque?”
+
+“Yes, if you want it right away.” To which, however, he added, clapping
+vainly a breast-pocket: “But my cheque-book’s down in my car.”
+
+“At the door?” She scarce required his assent to touch a bell. “I can
+easily send for it.” And she threw off while they waited: “It’s so sweet
+your ‘flying round’ with your cheque-book!”
+
+He put it with promptitude another way. “It flies round pretty well with
+_Mr_----!”
+
+“Mr. Bender’s cheque-book--in his car,” she went on to Gotch, who had
+answered her summons.
+
+The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: “You’ll find
+in the pocket a large red morocco case.”
+
+“Very good, sir,” said Gotch--but with another word for his mistress.
+“Lord John would like to know--”
+
+“Lord John’s there?” she interrupted.
+
+Gotch turned to the open door. “Here he is, my lady.”
+
+She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender’s eye, to the
+complication involved in his lordship’s presence. “It’s he who went
+round to Bond Street.”
+
+Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. “To stop the show?” And then
+as the young man was already there: “You’ve stopped the show?”
+
+“It’s ‘on’ more than ever!” Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a
+hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the
+backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. “But Theign should
+be here!”--he addressed her excitedly. “I announce you a call from the
+Prince.”
+
+“The Prince?”--she gasped as for the burden of the honour. “He follows
+you?”
+
+Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking,
+recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of associational
+advantage and auspicious possibility. “Is the Prince _after_ the thing?”
+
+Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing
+but his message. “He was there with Mackintosh--to see and admire the
+picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!--and
+did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh
+in his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our noble friend
+and of which, embarrassed though I doubtless was,” the young man pursued
+to Lady Sandgate, “I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so
+delighted with it that he declared they mustn’t think then of taking the
+thing off, but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it’s
+worth, and he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and
+explain him his reasons.”
+
+Their hostess cast about for a sign. “Why Theign is at Kitty’s, worse
+luck! The Prince calls on him _here?_”
+
+“He calls, you see, on _you_, my lady--at five-forty-five; and
+graciously desired me so to put it you.”
+
+“He’s very kind, but”--she took in her condition--“I’m not even
+_dressed!_”
+
+“You’ll have time”--the young man was a comfort--“while I rush to
+Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender--though it’s so near--if I just
+bag your car.”
+
+“That’s, that’s it, take his car!”--Lady Sandgate almost swept him away.
+
+“You may use my car all right,” Mr. Bender contributed--“but what I want
+to know is what the man’s _after_.”
+
+“The man? what man?” his friend scarce paused to ask.
+
+“The Prince then--if you allow he _is_ a man! Is he after my picture?”
+
+Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. “If you’ll wait, my dear fellow,
+you’ll see.”
+
+“Oh why should he ‘wait’?” burst from their cautious companion--only
+to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious
+revolution. “Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender--I won’t give you up for
+any Prince!” With which she appealed again to Lord John. “He wants to
+‘congratulate’?”
+
+“On Theign’s decision, as I’ve told you--which I announced to
+Mackintosh, by Theign’s extraordinary order, under his Highness’s nose,
+and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot.”
+
+Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick
+perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the
+Prince’s interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their
+actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. “The
+decision to remove the picture?”
+
+Lord John also observed a discretion. “He wouldn’t hear of such a
+thing--says it must stay stock still. So there you are!”
+
+This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a
+clamorous, series of questions. “But _where_ are we, and what has the
+Prince to do with Lord Theign’s decision when that’s all _I’m_ here for?
+What in thunder _is_ Lord Theign’s decision--what was his ‘extraordinary
+order’?”
+
+Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this
+solicitor as he had already been put off. “Lady Sandgate, _you_ tell
+him! I rush!”
+
+Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. “What the
+h---- then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what
+‘sentiments’ did he report round there that Lord Theign had been
+expressing?”
+
+His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to
+recognise the subject of his curiosity--for fear of other recognitions.
+“They put everything on _me_, my dear man--but I haven’t the least
+idea.”
+
+He looked at her askance. “Then why does the fellow say you have?”
+
+Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. “Because the
+fellow’s so agog that he doesn’t know _what_ he says!” In addition
+to which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on
+a salver the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called
+attention.
+
+“The large red morocco case.”
+
+Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. “Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on
+my desk,” she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again
+before she resumed to her visitor: “Mightn’t we conclude before he
+comes?”
+
+“The Prince?” Mr. Bender’s imagination had strayed from the ground to
+which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps.
+“Will _he_ want your great-grandmother?”
+
+“Well, he may when he sees her!” Lady Sandgate laughed. “And Theign,
+when he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every
+information. Shall I fish it out for you?” she encouragingly asked,
+beside him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her
+persuasive guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him,
+opening out the gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but
+to help himself. “What enormous cheques! _You_ can never draw one for
+two-pound-ten!”
+
+“That’s exactly what you deserve I _should_ do!” He remained after this
+solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with ceremonies;
+in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held out to
+him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they might
+have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.
+
+He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before
+him on the table, coming away with a brave gay “Well, I leave it to
+you!” She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance
+for many minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the
+recurrent Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.
+
+“Mr. Crimble, please--for Lady Grace.”
+
+“Mr. Crimble _again?_”--she took it discomposedly.
+
+It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. “Mr.
+Crimble? Why he’s just the man I want to see!”
+
+Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. “Here he is,
+my lady.”
+
+“Then tell her ladyship.”
+
+“She has come down,” said Gotch while Hugh arrived and his companion
+withdrew, and while Lady Grace, reaching the scene from the other
+quarter, emerged in bright equipment--in her hat, scarf and gloves.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+These young persons were thus at once confronted across the room, and
+the girl explained her preparation. “I was listening hard--for your
+knock and your voice.”
+
+“Then know that, thank God, it’s all right!”--Hugh was breathless,
+jubilant, radiant.
+
+“A Mantovano?” she delightedly cried.
+
+“A Mantovano!” he proudly gave back.
+
+“A Mantovano!”--it carried even Lady Sandgate away.
+
+“A Mantovano--a sure thing?” Mr. Bender jumped up from his business, all
+gaping attention to Hugh.
+
+“I’ve just left our blest Bardi,” said that young man--“who hasn’t the
+shadow of a doubt and is delighted to publish it everywhere.”
+
+“Will he publish it right here to _me?_” Mr. Bender hungrily asked.
+
+“Well,” Hugh smiled, “you can try him.”
+
+“But try him how, where?” The great collector, straining to instant
+action, cast about for his hat “Where _is_ he, hey?”
+
+“Don’t you wish I’d tell you?” Hugh, in his personal elation, almost
+cynically answered.
+
+“Won’t you wait for the Prince?” Lady Sandgate had meanwhile asked of
+her friend; but had turned more inspectingly to Lady Grace before he
+could reply. “My dear child--though you’re lovely!--are you sure you’re
+ready for him?”
+
+“For the Prince!”--the girl was vague. “Is he coming?”
+
+“At five-forty-five.” With which she consulted her bracelet watch, but
+only at once to wail for alarm. “Ah, it _is_ that, and I’m not dressed!”
+ She hurried off through the other room.
+
+Mr. Bender, quite accepting her retreat, addressed himself again
+unabashed to Hugh: “It’s your blest Bardi I want first--I’ll take the
+Prince after.”
+
+The young man clearly could afford indulgence now. “Then I left him at
+Long’s Hotel.”
+
+“Why, right near! I’ll come back.” And Mr. Bender’s flight was on the
+wings of optimism.
+
+But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. “Why does the
+Prince come, and what in the world’s happening?”
+
+“My father has suddenly returned--it may have to do with that.”
+
+The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. “Mayn’t
+it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?”
+
+“I don’t know--and I think I don’t care. I don’t care,” she said, “so
+long as you’re right and as the greatest light of all declares you are.”
+
+“He _is_ the greatest”--Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: “I could
+see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature! There,
+_before_ the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for those
+great moments, practically to ourselves--without Macintosh to take in
+what was happening or any one else at all to speak of--it was but a
+matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and _I_ had conquered.”
+
+“Naturally you had!”--the girl hung on him for it; “and what was
+happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear
+divination, one of the divinations of genius--with every creature all
+these ages so stupid--you were being baptized on the spot a great man.”
+
+“Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn’t think
+_he’s_ one: that that eminent judge couldn’t, even with such a leg up,
+rise to my level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,”
+ Hugh went on in his gladness, “what for _us_ has most particularly and
+preciously taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career--”
+
+“Your reputation,” she cried, “blazes out and your fortune’s made?”
+
+He did a happy violence to his modesty. “Well, Bardi adores intelligence
+and takes off his hat to me.”
+
+“Then you need take off yours to nobody!”--such was Lady Grace’s proud
+opinion. “But I should like to take off mine to _him_,” she added;
+“which I seem to have put on--to get out and away with you--expressly
+for that.”
+
+Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. “Ah, we’ll go forth
+together to him then--thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!--and
+you’ll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me.”
+
+His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. “The only thing is
+that our awful American----!”
+
+But he warned her with a raised hand. “Not to speak of our awful
+Briton!”
+
+For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign,
+unattended, who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled
+up and held them a minute in reprehensive view--all at least till Hugh
+undauntedly, indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.
+
+“Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it’s because I’ve a
+small, but precious document to deliver you, if you’ll allow me to do
+so; which I feel it important myself to place in your hand.” He drew
+from his breast a pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed
+envelope; retaining the latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while
+Lord Theign only opposed to this demonstration an unmitigated blankness.
+He went none the less bravely on. “I mentioned to you the last time we
+somewhat infelicitously met that I intended to appeal to another and
+probably more closely qualified artistic authority on the subject of
+your so-called Moretto; and I in fact saw the picture half an hour ago
+with Bardi of Milan, who, there in presence of it, did absolute, did
+ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the claim I’ve been making. I then
+went with him to his hotel, close at hand, where he dashed me off this
+brief and rapid, but quite conclusive, Declaration, which, if you’ll be
+so good as to read it, will enable you perhaps to join us in regarding
+the vexed question as settled.”
+
+His lordship, having faced this speech without a sign, rested on the
+speaker a somewhat more confessed intelligence, then looked hard at
+the offered note and hard at the floor--all to avert himself actively
+afterward and, with his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance,
+as it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on
+his attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his
+companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His
+daughter none the less lifted her voice. “If you won’t take what he has
+for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?” And then as
+after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, “It may be
+so long again,” she said, “before you’ve a chance to do a thing I ask.”
+
+“The chance will depend on yourself!” he returned with high dry
+emphasis. But he held out his hand for the note Hugh had given her and
+with which she approached him; and though face to face they seemed more
+separated than brought near by this contact without commerce. She turned
+away on one side when he had taken the missive, as Hugh had turned away
+on the other; Lord Theign drew forth the contents of the envelope and
+broodingly and inexpressively read the few lines; after which, as having
+done justice to their sense, he thrust the paper forth again till his
+daughter became aware and received it. She restored it to her friend
+while her father dandled off anew, but coming round this time, almost as
+by a circuit of the room, and meeting Hugh, who took advantage of it to
+repeat by a frank gesture his offer of Bardi’s attestation. Lord Theign
+passed with the young man on this a couple of mute minutes of the same
+order as those he had passed with Lady Grace in the same connection;
+their eyes dealt deeply with their eyes--but to the effect of his
+lordship’s accepting the gift, which after another minute he had slipped
+into his breast-pocket. It was not till then that he brought out a curt
+but resonant “Thank you!” While the others awaited his further pleasure
+he again bethought himself--then he addressed Lady Grace. “I must let
+Mr. Bender know----”
+
+“Mr. Bender,” Hugh interposed, “does know. He’s at the present moment
+with the author of that note at Long’s Hotel.”
+
+“Then I must now write him”--and his lordship, while he spoke and from
+where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.
+
+“Will you write _there?_”--and his daughter indicated Lady Sandgate’s
+desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.
+
+Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his
+view on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so
+tiresome a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and
+had reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display
+of some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp “Hallo!”
+
+“You don’t find things?” Lady Grace asked--as remote from him in one
+quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.
+
+“On the contrary!” he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any
+further surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an
+envelope, which he addressed and brought away.
+
+“If you like,” said Hugh urbanely, “I’ll carry him that myself.”
+
+“But how do you know what it consists of?”
+
+“I don’t know. But I risk it.”
+
+His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner--he
+even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the
+finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself
+of any measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the
+interesting object, to redeem his offer of service. “Then you’ll learn,”
+ he simply said.
+
+“And may _I_ learn?” asked Lady Grace.
+
+“You?” The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.
+
+“May I go _with_ him?”
+
+Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme
+bitterness--a nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were
+familiar, but before which their first movement was always tightly to
+close. “_With_ me, my lord,” said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined
+they should open and intensifying the emphasis.
+
+He had his effect, and Lord Theign’s answer, addressed to Lady Grace,
+made indifference very comprehensive. “You may do what ever you
+dreadfully like!”
+
+At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as
+absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open
+for her.
+
+Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her
+expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have
+preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could
+yet find inspiration too in the very difficulty and the old faiths
+themselves that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth
+and beauty in her serious young face--as it had indeed a force that,
+not indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for
+longer exposure to. His shift of his attitude before she went out was
+fairly an evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter’s
+made him afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a
+fear of the other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace passes from
+us at any rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale
+concentration--leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on
+the door.
+
+“You thanked me just now for Bardi’s opinion after all,” Hugh said with
+a smile; “and it seems to me that--after all as well--I’ve grounds for
+thanking you!” On which he left his benefactor alone.
+
+“Tit for tat!” There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the
+young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served
+his turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to
+the piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it
+again the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally
+recognise as Mr. Bender’s forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising
+value he now studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing
+from him an articulate “What in damnation--?” His speculation dropped
+before the return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room
+fell upon his ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque
+into his waistcoat.
+
+Lady Sandgate appeared now in due--that is in the most happily
+adjusted--splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter
+and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, “Tea will be
+downstairs,” she said. “But you’re alone?”
+
+“I’ve just parted,” her friend replied, “with Grace and Mr. Crimble.”
+
+“‘Parted’ with them?”--the ambiguity struck her.
+
+“Well, they’ve gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!”
+
+“You speak,” she laughed, “as if it were too gross--I They’re surely
+coming back?”
+
+“Back to you, if you like--but not to me.”
+
+“Ah, what are you and I,” she tenderly argued, “but one and the same
+quantity? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in--well,
+whatever they’re doing,” she cheerfully added, “you’ll get beautifully
+used to it.”
+
+“That’s just what I’m afraid of--what such horrid matters make of one!”
+
+“At the worst then, you see”--she maintained her optimism--“the
+recipient of royal attentions!”
+
+“Oh,” said her companion, whom his honour seemed to leave comparatively
+cold, “it’s simply as if the gracious Personage were coming to condole!”
+
+Impatient of the lapse of time, in any case, she assured herself again
+of the hour. “Well, if he only does come!”
+
+“John--the wretch!” Lord Theign returned--“will take care of that: he
+has nailed him and will bring him.”
+
+“What was it then,” his friend found occasion in the particular tone of
+this reference to demand, “what was it that, when you sent him off, John
+spoke of you in Bond Street as specifically intending?”
+
+Oh he saw it now all lucidly--if not rather luridly--and thereby
+the more tragically. “He described me in his nasty rage as
+consistently--well, heroic!”
+
+“His rage”--she pieced it sympathetically out--“at your destroying his
+cherished credit with Bender?”
+
+Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of
+it. “I had come between him and some profit that he doesn’t confess to,
+but that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he
+caught the chance, to the Prince--and the People!”
+
+She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception
+of it. “By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People
+the picture--?”
+
+“As a sacrifice--yes!--to morbid, though respectable scruples.” To which
+he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene: “But I
+hope you’ve nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?”
+
+Lady Sandgate waited--then boldly took her line. “None whatever! You had
+reacted against Bender--but you hadn’t gone so far as _that!_”
+
+He had it now all vividly before him. “I had reacted--like a gentleman;
+but it didn’t thereby follow that I acted--or spoke--like a demagogue;
+and my mind’s a complete blank on the subject of my having done so.”
+
+“So that there only flushes through your conscience,” she suggested,
+“the fact that he has forced your hand?”
+
+Fevered with the sore sense of it his lordship wiped his brow. “He has
+played me, for spite, his damned impertinent trick!”
+
+She found but after a minute--for it wasn’t easy--the right word, or the
+least wrong, for the situation. “Well, even if he did so diabolically
+commit you, you still don’t want--do you?--to back out?”
+
+Resenting the suggestion, which restored all his nobler form, Lord
+Theign fairly drew himself up. “When did I ever in all my life back
+out?”
+
+“Never, never in all your life of course!”--she dashed a bucketful at
+the flare. “And the picture after all----!”
+
+“The picture after all”--he took her up in cold grim gallant
+despair--“has just been pronounced definitely priceless.” And then
+to meet her gaping ignorance: “By Mr. Crimble’s latest and apparently
+greatest adviser, who strongly stamps it a Mantovano and whose practical
+affidavit I now possess.”
+
+Poor Lady Sandgate gaped but the more--she wondered and yearned.
+“Definitely priceless?”
+
+“Definitely priceless.” After which he took from its place of lurking,
+considerately unfolding it, the goodly slip he had removed from her
+blotting-book. “Worth even more therefore than what Bender so blatantly
+offers.”
+
+Her attention fell with interest, from the distance at which she
+stood, on this confirmatory document, her recognition of which was not
+immediate. “And is that the affidavit?”
+
+“This is a cheque to your order, my lady, for ten thousand pounds.”
+
+“Ten thousand?”--she echoed it with a shout.
+
+“Drawn by some hand unknown,” he went on quietly.
+
+“Unknown?”--again, in her muffled joy, she let it sound out.
+
+“Which I found there at your desk a moment ago, and thought best, in
+your interest, to rescue from accident or neglect; even though it be,
+save for the single stroke of a name begun,” he wound up with his look
+like a playing searchlight, “unhappily unsigned.”
+
+“Unsigned?”--the exhibition of her design, of her defeat, kept shaking
+her. “Then it isn’t good--?”
+
+“It’s a Barmecide feast, my dear!”--he had still, her kind friend, his
+note of grimness and also his penetration of eye. “But who is it writes
+you colossal cheques?”
+
+“And then leaves them lying about?” Her case was so bad that you
+would have seen how she felt she must _do_ something--something quite
+splendid. She recovered herself, she faced the situation with all her
+bright bravery of expression and aspect; conscious, you might have
+guessed, that she had never more strikingly embodied, on such lines, the
+elegant, the beautiful and the true. “Why, who can it have been but poor
+Breckenridge too?”
+
+“‘Breckenridge’--?” Lord Theign had _his_ smart echoes. “What in the
+world does he owe you money for?”
+
+It took her but an instant more--she performed the great repudiation
+quite as she might be prepared to sweep, in the Presence impending,
+her grandest curtsey. “_Not_, you sweet suspicious thing, for my
+great-grandmother!” And then as his glare didn’t fade: “Bender makes my
+life a burden--for the love of my precious Lawrence.”
+
+“Which you’re weakly letting him grab?”--nothing could have been
+finer with this than Lord Theign’s reprobation unless it had been his
+surprise.
+
+She shook her head as in bland compassion for such an idea. “It isn’t
+a payment, you goose--it’s a bribe! I’ve withstood him, these trying
+weeks, as a rock the tempest; but he wrote that and left it there, the
+fiend, to tempt me--to corrupt me!”
+
+“Without putting his name?”--her companion again turned over the cheque.
+
+She bethought herself, clearly with all her genius, as to this anomaly,
+and the light of reality broke. “He must have been interrupted in the
+artful act--he sprang up with such a bound at Mr. Crimble’s news. At
+once then--for his interest in it--he hurried off, leaving the cheque
+forgotten and unfinished.” She smiled more intensely, her eyes attached,
+as from fascination, to the morsel of paper still handled by her friend.
+“But of course on his next visit he’ll _add_ his great signature.”
+
+“The devil he will!”--and Lord Theign, with the highest spirit, tore the
+crisp token into several pieces, which fluttered, as worthless now as
+pure snowflakes, to the floor.
+
+“Ay, ay, ay!”--it drew from her a wail of which the character, for its
+sharp inconsequence, was yet comic.
+
+This renewed his stare at her. “Do _you_ want to back out? I mean from
+your noble stand.”
+
+As quickly, however, she had saved herself. “I’d rather do even what
+you’re doing--offer my treasure to the Thingumbob!”
+
+He was touched by this even to sympathy. “Will you then _join_ me in
+setting the example of a great donation------?”
+
+“To the What-do-you-call-it?” she extravagantly smiled.
+
+“I call it,” he said with dignity, “the ‘National Gallery.’”
+
+She closed her eyes as with a failure of breath. “Ah my dear friend--!”
+
+“It would convince me,” he went on, insistent and persuasive.
+
+“Of the sincerity of my affection?”--she drew nearer to him.
+
+“It would comfort me”--he was satisfied with his own expression. Yet
+in a moment, when she had come all rustlingly and fragrantly close, “It
+would captivate me,” he handsomely added.
+
+“It would captivate you?” It was for _her_, we should have seen, to be
+satisfied with his expression; and, with our more informed observation
+of all it was a question of her giving up, she would have struck us as
+subtly bargaining.
+
+He gallantly amplified. “It would peculiarly--by which I mean it would
+so naturally--unite us!”
+
+Well, that was all she wanted. “Then for a complete union with you--of
+fact as well as of fond fancy!” she smiled--“there’s nothing, even to my
+one ewe lamb, I’m not ready to surrender.”
+
+“Ah, we don’t surrender,” he urged--“we enjoy!”
+
+“Yes,” she understood: “with the glory of our grand gift thrown in.”
+
+“We quite swagger,” he gravely observed--“though even swaggering would
+after this be dull without you.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll _swagger_ with you!” she cried as if it quite settled and made
+up for everything; and then impatiently, as she beheld Lord John, whom
+the door had burst open to admit: “The Prince?”
+
+“The Prince!”--the young man launched it as a call to arms.
+
+They had fallen apart on the irruption, the pair discovered, but she
+flashed straight at her lover: “Then we can swagger now!”
+
+Lord Theign had reached the open door. “I meet him below.”
+
+Demurring, debating, however, she stayed him a moment. “But oughtn’t
+I--in my own house?”
+
+His lordship caught her meaning. “You mean he may think--?” But he as
+easily pronounced. “He shall think the Truth!” And with a kiss of his
+hand to her he was gone.
+
+Lord John, who had gazed in some wonder at these demonstrations, was
+quickly about to follow, but she checked him with an authority she
+had never before used and which was clearly the next moment to prove
+irresistible. “Lord John, be so good as to stop.” Looking about at the
+condition of a room on the point of receiving so august a character,
+she observed on the floor the fragments of the torn cheque, to which she
+sharply pointed. “And please pick up that litter!”
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTCRY ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Outcry
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21969]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTCRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTCRY
+
+By Henry James
+
+1911
+
+
+BOOK FIRST
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"NO, my lord," Banks had replied, "no stranger has yet arrived. But
+I'll see if any one has come in--or who has." As he spoke, however, he
+observed Lady Sandgate's approach to the hall by the entrance giving
+upon the great terrace, and addressed her on her passing the threshold.
+"Lord John, my lady." With which, his duty majestically performed, he
+retired to the quarter--that of the main access to the spacious centre
+of the house--from which he had ushered the visitor.
+
+This personage, facing Lady Sandgate as she paused there a moment framed
+by the large doorway to the outer expanses, the small pinkish paper of
+a folded telegram in her hand, had partly before him, as an immediate
+effect, the high wide interior, still breathing the quiet air and the
+fair pannelled security of the couple of hushed and stored centuries, in
+which certain of the reputed treasures of Dedborough Place beautifully
+disposed themselves; and then, through ample apertures and beyond
+the stately stone outworks of the great seated and supported
+house--uplifting terrace, balanced, balustraded steps and containing
+basins where splash and spray were at rest--all the rich composed
+extension of garden and lawn and park. An ancient, an assured elegance
+seemed to reign; pictures and preserved "pieces," cabinets and
+tapestries, spoke, each for itself, of fine selection and high
+distinction; while the originals of the old portraits, in more or less
+deserved salience, hung over the happy scene as the sworn members of a
+great guild might have sat, on the beautiful April day, at one of their
+annual feasts.
+
+Such was the setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman
+of considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided
+with that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such
+complacent company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists
+and turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue
+or easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no
+point more so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane
+future certain to be more and more offensive to women of real quality
+and of formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue to
+the antique confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, had
+given way to curiosity--that is to speculation--however disguised. She
+might have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid,
+but she would presumably have confessed, if put on her trial for
+restlessness or for intelligence, that she _was_, after all, almost
+clever enough to be vulgar. Unmistakably, moreover, she had still, with
+her fine stature, her disciplined figure, her cherished complexion, her
+bright important hair, her kind bold eyes and her large constant smile,
+the degree of beauty that might pretend to put every other question by.
+
+Lord John addressed her as with a significant manner that he might have
+had--that of a lack of need, or even of interest, for any explanation
+about herself: it would have been clear that he was apt to discriminate
+with sharpness among possible claims on his attention. "I luckily find
+_you_ at least, Lady Sandgate--they tell me Theign's off somewhere."
+
+She replied as with the general habit, on her side, of bland
+reassurance; it mostly had easier consequences--for herself--than the
+perhaps more showy creation of alarm. "Only off in the park--open to-day
+for a school-feast from Dedborough, as you may have made out from the
+avenue; giving good advice, at the top of his lungs, to four hundred and
+fifty children."
+
+It was such a scene, and such an aspect of the personage so accounted
+for, as Lord John could easily take in, and his recognition familiarly
+smiled. "Oh he's so great on such occasions that I'm sorry to be missing
+it."
+
+"I've _had_ to miss it," Lady Sandgate sighed--"that is to miss the
+peroration. I've just left them, but he had even then been going on for
+twenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you'll
+find him, poor dear victim of duty, still _at_ it."
+
+"I'll warrant--for, as I often tell him, he makes the idea of one's duty
+an awful thing to his friends by the extravagance with which he always
+overdoes it." And the image itself appeared in some degree to prompt
+this particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider. "I
+should like to come in for the grand _finale_, but I rattled over in a
+great measure to meet a party, as he calls himself--and calls, if you
+please, even me!--who's motoring down by appointment and whom I think I
+should be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in the hope
+of a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine _that!_"
+
+"I can imagine it perfectly," said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently no
+perceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. "It quite sticks
+out of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waiting
+to see. But you haven't then," she added, "come from town?"
+
+"No, I'm for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly
+lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring."
+
+Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no
+longer than was decent. "But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her
+preference, just settling down to bridge."
+
+"Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day
+gets up----!"
+
+"Which the Duchess never does?"--Lady Sand-gate only asked to be allowed
+to show how she saw it. "She fights to the last, invincible; gathering
+in the spoils and only routing her friends?" She abounded genially in
+her privileged vision. "Ah yes--we know something of that!"
+
+Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye,
+fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in
+compassion. "You too then?"
+
+She wouldn't, however, too meanly narrow it down. "Well, in this house
+generally; where I'm so often made welcome, you see, and where----"
+
+"Where," he broke in at once, "your jolly good footing quite sticks out
+of _you_, perhaps you'll let me say!"
+
+She clearly didn't mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal
+with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only
+decide to deal quite simply. "You can't say more than I feel--and am
+proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they're worried."
+
+This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for
+him, if she would, all the facts equally. "And they're worried now,
+you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of
+making a great noise if she isn't paid? I ought to mind speaking of
+that truth," he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of
+delicacy; "but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a
+bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here."
+
+Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. "Because poor Kitty Imber--who
+should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as
+I've had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible
+big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to 'look to'
+even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly
+did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home."
+
+She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing
+to the note of free inquiry in Lord John's reply. "You mean that our
+lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this
+time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?"
+
+His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide
+after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it.
+"Well, in that set----!"
+
+"My mother's set?" However, if she could smile he could laugh. "I'm much
+obliged!"
+
+"Oh," she qualified, "I don't criticise her Grace; but the ways and
+traditions and tone of this house----"
+
+"Make it"--he took her sense straight from her--"the house in England
+where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder
+daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of
+others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of
+her reputation? Exactly so," he went on before she could meet it with a
+diplomatic ambiguity; "and just that, I assure you, is a large part of
+the reason I like to come here--since I personally don't come with any
+such associations."
+
+"Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!"
+
+The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost
+as a liberty taken. "How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I
+represent?"
+
+She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. "Well, don't you
+represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don't
+you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_
+perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy
+old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our
+admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending
+yourself to dear Grace?"
+
+Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent
+infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing
+his chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough on
+some felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck,
+the strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with the
+young woman to whom our friends' reference thus broadened still a
+vague quantity for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quite
+possible--and this despite an odd element in him that you might have
+described as a certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son of
+a noble matron recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed in
+no immediate or aggressive manner any imputable private heritage
+or privilege of arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiated
+fineness if his lustre hadn't been a little prematurely dimmed. Active
+yet insubstantial, he was slight and short and a trifle too punctually,
+though not yet quite lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his
+eyebrow, the finish of his facial line, the economy of "treatment"
+by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his
+meagre mouth to smile its spareness away.
+
+He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely,
+without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear
+instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and
+immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living
+at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied
+air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the
+ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly,
+you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he
+really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his
+interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable.
+
+"May I ask what you mean," he inquired of Lady Sandgate, "by the
+question of my 'arranging'?"
+
+"I mean that you're the very clever son of a very clever mother."
+
+"Oh, I'm less clever than you think," he replied--"if you really think
+it of me at all; and mamma's a good sight cleverer!"
+
+"Than I think?" Lady Sandgate echoed. "Why, she's the person in all our
+world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what
+she wants through." But she at once added: "That is _if_--!" pausing on
+it with a smile.
+
+"If what then?"
+
+"Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of
+cleverness without exception--and to have them," said Lady Sandgate, "to
+the very end."
+
+He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. "The
+very end of what?"
+
+She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be,
+and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. "Say of her so
+wonderfully successful _general_ career."
+
+It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations
+short. "When you're as clever as she you'll be as good." To which he
+subjoined: "You don't begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good
+she is." This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might
+appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt
+with a more explicit challenge. "What is it exactly that you suppose
+yourself to know?"
+
+Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided
+to take everything. "I always proceed on the assumption that I know
+everything, because that makes people tell me."
+
+"It wouldn't make we," he quite rang out, "if I didn't want to! But as
+it happens," he allowed, "there's a question it would be convenient
+to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional
+relation with him, extremely in Theign's confidence."
+
+She waited a little as for more. "Is that your question--_whether_ I
+am?"
+
+"No, but if you are you'll the better answer it"
+
+She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. "We're the best
+friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman
+with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here,
+as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I'm
+happy to say that--for my pleasure when I'm really curious--this doesn't
+close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things."
+
+"Then I hope you've ground for believing that if I go the right way
+about it he's likely to listen to me."
+
+Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. "The
+person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must
+have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful
+wheedler, his elder daughter."
+
+"Lady Imber's _here?_" Lord John alertly asked.
+
+"She arrived last night and--as we've other visitors--seems to have set
+up a side-show in the garden."
+
+"Then she'll 'draw' of course immensely, as she always does. But her
+sister won't be in that case with her," the young man supposed.
+
+"Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well
+may," said Lady Sandgate, "but I must tell you that when I last noticed
+them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away."
+
+Lord John figured it a moment. "Lady Imber"--he ironically enlarged the
+figure--"_can_ lead people away."
+
+"Oh, dear Grace," his companion returned, "happens fortunately to be
+firm!"
+
+This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. "Not against
+_me_, however--you don't mean? You don't think she has a beastly
+prejudice----?"
+
+"Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what
+mayn't--have happened between you."
+
+"Well, I try to judge"--and such candour as was possible to Lord John
+seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. "But I'm in fear of seeing her
+too much as I want to see her."
+
+There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to
+meet "Are you absolutely in earnest about her?"
+
+"Of course I am--why shouldn't I be? But," he said with impatience, "I
+want help."
+
+"Very well then, that's what Lady Imber's giving you." And as it
+appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense,
+she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in
+a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted
+control of stray signs and shy lights. "By telling her, by bringing it
+home to her, that if she'll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess
+will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty."
+
+Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet
+regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.
+"Well, and by _me_." To which he added with more of a challenge in it:
+"But you really know what my mother will do?"
+
+"By my system," Lady Sandgate smiled, "you see I've guessed. What your
+mother will do is what brought you over!"
+
+"Well, it's that," he allowed--"and something else."
+
+"Something else?" she derisively echoed. "I should think 'that,' for an
+ardent lover, would have been enough."
+
+"Ah, but it's all one Job! I mean it's one idea," he hastened to
+explain--"if you think Lady Imber's really acting on her."
+
+"Mightn't you go and see?"
+
+"I would in a moment if I hadn't to look out for another matter too."
+And he renewed his attention to his watch. "I mean getting straight at
+my American, the party I just mentioned------"
+
+But she had already taken him up. "You too have an American and a
+'party,' and yours also motors down----?"
+
+"Mr. Breckenridge Bender." Lord John named him with a shade of elation.
+
+She gaped at the fuller light "You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped
+was coming for me!"
+
+Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. "Had he told you so?"
+
+She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since
+her entrance. "He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes
+ago out there, has brought me in to receive him."
+
+The young man read out this missive. "'Failing to find you in Bruton
+Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.'" It did
+involve an ambiguity. "Why, he has been engaged these three days
+to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my
+business."
+
+Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich
+scene. "Then why does he say it's me he's pursuing?"
+
+He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced
+monopoly. "My dear lady, he's pursuing expensive works of art."
+
+"By which you imply that I'm one?" She might have been wound up by her
+disappointment to almost any irony.
+
+"I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he
+arranged with me about," Lord John explained, "was that he should
+see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in
+particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I've been thus
+glad to assist him."
+
+This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the
+listener's mystification. "Then why--this whole week that I've been in
+the house--hasn't our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?"
+
+"Because our good friend here has had no reason"--Lord John could treat
+it now as simple enough. "Good as he is in all ways, he's so best of
+all about showing the house and its contents that I haven't even thought
+necessary to write him that I'm introducing Breckenridge."
+
+"I should have been happy to introduce him," Lady Sandgate just
+quavered--"if I had at all known he wanted it."
+
+Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to
+pronounce it a trifle he didn't care a fig for. "I surrender you that
+privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I've seemed to you
+to snatch it from you." To which Lord John added, as with liberality
+unrestricted, "But I've been taking him about to see what's worth
+while--as only last week to Lady Lappington's Longhi."
+
+This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady
+Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. "Her Longhi?"
+
+"Why, don't you know her great Venetian family group, the
+What-do-you-call-'ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for
+which he paid her her price before he left the house."
+
+She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her
+wistful thought: "Seven full-length figures? Her price?"
+
+"Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows," said Lord John, "what he
+wants."
+
+"And does he want only"--her wonder grew and grew--
+
+"What-do-you-call-'ems'?"
+
+"He most usually wants what he can't have." Lord John made scarce more
+of it than that. "But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington
+went _at_ him."
+
+It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. "How
+horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!" But this was far from the
+end of her interest. "And is that the way he pays?"
+
+"Before he leaves the house?" Lord John lived it amusedly over. "Well,
+_she_ took care of that."
+
+"How incredibly vulgar!" It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still
+other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington's
+case, though she didn't glance at this. "He makes the most scandalous
+eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother." And then as richly to
+enlighten any blankness: "My tremendous Lawrence, don't you know?--in
+her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily
+speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints:
+universally considered the masterpiece of the artist."
+
+Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in
+which he wasn't interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind
+it. "And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?"
+
+She held her head high. "I've indignantly refused--for all his pressing
+me so hard."
+
+"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 may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything."
+
+These things might be, Lady Sandgate's face and gesture apparently
+signified; but another question diverted her. "You're clearly a
+wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you're on such
+an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?"
+
+"'Interested'?" he echoed; though it wasn't to gain time, he showed, for
+he would in that case have taken more. "To the extent, you mean, of my
+little percentage?" And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
+smile on him: "Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about your
+great-grandmother--you've nothing to place?"
+
+It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when
+she spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared.
+"I ask because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to
+the--how shall I name it?--the common weal; and because of my general
+strong feeling that we don't want any more of our national treasures
+(for I regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about
+the world."
+
+"There's much in this country and age," he replied in an off-hand
+manner, "to be said about _that_," The present, however, was not the
+time to say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it
+with a smile that signified sufficiency. "To my friends, I need scarcely
+remark to you, I'm all the friend."
+
+She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to
+the terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this
+functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy
+interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as
+she turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. "It's the friend
+then clearly who's wanted in the park."
+
+She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand
+a missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her
+companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where
+she had left it. "By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you'll
+join them below the terrace."
+
+"Ah, Grace hopes," said Lady Sandgate for the young man's encouragement.
+"There you are!"
+
+Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. "I rush
+to Lady Grace, but don't demoralise Bender!" And he went forth to the
+terrace and the gardens.
+
+Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function.
+"Will you have tea, my lady?"
+
+This appeared to strike her as premature. "Oh, thanks--when they all
+come in."
+
+"They'll scarcely _all_, my lady"--he indicated respectfully that he
+knew what he was talking about. "There's tea in her ladyship's tent;
+but," he qualified, "it has also been ordered for the saloon."
+
+"Ah then," she said cheerfully, "Mr. Bender will be glad--!" And she
+became, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banks
+considered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by the
+footman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. "Here
+he must be, my lady." With which he retired to the spacious opposite
+quarter, where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed,
+retreated as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, received
+the many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord John's
+irritating confidence and of Lady Lappington's massive cheque.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both hands
+out, she had at once gone on: "You'll of course have tea?--in the
+saloon."
+
+But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolve
+before sounding. "Why; the very first thing?"
+
+She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. "Ah, have it the
+last if you like!"
+
+"You see your English teas--!" he pleaded as he looked about him, so
+immediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents that
+his friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which he
+must have swept Lady Lappington's inferior scene.
+
+"They're too much for you?"
+
+"Well, they're too many. I think I've had two or three on the road--at
+any rate my man did. I like to do business before--" But his sequence
+dropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
+
+She divertedly picked it up. "Before tea, Mr. Bender?"
+
+"Before everything, Lady Sandgate." He was immensely genial, but a
+queer, quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safe--for
+himself.
+
+"Then you've _come_ to do business?" Her appeal and her emphasis melted
+as into a caress--which, however, spent itself on his large high person
+as he consented, with less of demonstration but more of attention, to
+look down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by an intenser
+note. "To tell me you _will_ treat?"
+
+Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having received
+benefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shone
+as with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointed
+sanity and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair of
+very ample wings--wide pinions for the present conveniently folded, but
+that he would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spread
+for great flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable,
+even a worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had not
+the affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular.
+Fortune, felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at his
+cradle-side--whatever the ministering power might have been--had simply
+overlooked and neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showed
+not so much for perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neither
+formed nor fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have been
+done for it but what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush and
+the looking-glass could officiously do; it had in short resisted
+any possibly finer attrition at the hands of fifty years of offered
+experience. It had developed on the lines, if lines they could be
+called, of the mere scoured and polished and initialled "mug" rather
+than to any effect of a composed physiognomy; though we must at the
+same time add that its wearer carried this featureless disk as with the
+warranted confidence that might have attended a warning headlight or
+a glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named it, showed you at
+least where he was, and most often that he was straight upon you. It
+was fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance that Lady
+Sandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that he
+soon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. "For your
+grandmother, Lady Sandgate?" he then returned.
+
+"For my grandmother's _mother_, Mr. Bender--the most beautiful woman
+of her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as you
+quite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street."
+
+Mr. Bender bethought himself further--yet drawing it out; as if the
+familiar fact of his being "made up to" had never had such special
+softness and warmth of pressure. "Do you want very, _very_ much----?"
+
+She had already caught him up. "'Very, very much' for her? Well, Mr.
+Bender," she smilingly replied, "I think I should like her full value."
+
+"I mean"--he kindly discriminated--"do you want so badly to work her
+off?"
+
+"It would be an intense convenience to me--so much so that your telegram
+made me at once fondly hope you'd be arriving to conclude."
+
+Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was the
+mere frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient range
+elsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kind
+even while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one of
+the several, the famous Dedborough pictures--stray specimens, by every
+presumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. "'Conclude'?" he
+echoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. "You ladies want
+to get there before the road's so much as laid or the country's safe! Do
+you know what this _here_ is?" he at once went on.
+
+"Oh, you can't have _that!_" she cried as with full authority--"and
+you must really understand that you can't have everything. You mustn't
+expect to ravage Dedborough."
+
+He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. "I guess it's a bogus
+Cuyp--but I know Lord Theign _has_ things. He won't do business?"
+
+"He's not in the least, and can never be, in my tight place," Lady
+Sandgate replied; "but he's as proud as he's kind, dear man, and
+as solid as he's proud; so that if you came down under a different
+impression--!" Well, she could only exhale the folly of his error with
+an unction that represented, whatever he might think of it, all her
+competence to answer for their host.
+
+He scarce thought of it enough, on any side, however, to be diverted
+from prior dispositions. "I came on an understanding that I should find
+my friend Lord John, and that Lord Theign would, on his introduction,
+kindly let me look round. But being before lunch in Bruton Street I
+knocked at your door----"
+
+"For another look," she quickly interposed, "at my Lawrence?"
+
+"For another look at _you_, Lady Sandgate--your great-grandmother wasn't
+required. Informed you were here, and struck with the coincidence of my
+being myself presently due," he went on, "I despatched you my wire, on
+coming away, just to keep up your spirits."
+
+"You _don't_ keep them up, you depress them to anguish," she almost
+passionately protested, "when you don't tell me you'll treat!"
+
+He paused in his preoccupation, his perambulation, conscious evidently
+of no reluctance that was worth a scene with so charming and so hungry
+a woman. "Well, if it's a question of your otherwise suffering torments,
+may I have another interview with the old lady?"
+
+"Dear Mr. Bender, she's in the flower of her youth; she only yearns for
+interviews, and you may have," Lady Sandgate earnestly declared, "as
+many as you like."
+
+"Oh, you must be there to protect me!"
+
+"Then as soon as I return----!"
+
+"Well,"--it clearly cost him little to say--"I'll come right round."
+
+She joyously registered the vow. "Only meanwhile then, please, never a
+word!"
+
+"Never a word, certainly. But where all this time," Mr. Bender asked,
+"is Lord John?"
+
+Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a young
+woman who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorway
+to the terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature and
+simply dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade of
+a large hat surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyes
+had vaguely questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to the
+gentleman forming the subject of their inquiry: "Lady Grace must know."
+At this the young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced the
+visitor. "My dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender."
+
+The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation,
+but she had urbanity to spare. "Of whom Lord John has told me," she
+returned, "and whom I'm glad to see. Lord John," she explained to his
+waiting friend, "is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big
+Temperance school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if
+you care to go out--!" She gave him in fine his choice.
+
+But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn't
+the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his
+prudence. "Are there any pictures in the park?"
+
+Lady Grace's facial response represented less humour perhaps, but more
+play. "We find our park itself rather a picture."
+
+Mr. Bender's own levity at any rate persisted. "With a big Temperance
+school-feast?"
+
+"Mr. Bender's a great judge of pictures," Lady Sandgate said as to
+forestall any impression of excessive freedom.
+
+"Will there be more tea?" he pursued, almost presuming on this.
+
+It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. "Oh, there'll
+be plenty of tea."
+
+This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. "Well, Lady Grace, I'm after
+pictures, but I take them 'neat.' May I go right round here?"
+
+"Perhaps, love," Lady Sandgate at once said, "you'll let me show him."
+
+"A moment, dear"--Lady Grace gently demurred. "Do go round," she
+conformably added to Mr. Bender; "take your ease and your time.
+Everything's open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,
+you'll have the place to yourself."
+
+He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. "I'll be in
+clover--sure!" But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture,
+which he could fluently enough name. "And I'll find 'The Beautiful
+Duchess of Waterbridge'?"
+
+She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the
+quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. "At the
+very end of _those_ rooms."
+
+He had wide eyes for the vista. "About thirty in a row, hey?" And he was
+already off. "I'll work right through!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. "Lord John
+warned me he was 'funny'--but you already know him?"
+
+There might have been a sense of embarrassment in the way in which, as
+to gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the small
+picture pronounced upon by Mr. Bender. "He thinks your little Cuyp a
+fraud."
+
+"That one?" Lady Grace could but stare. "The wretch!" However, she made,
+without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous question.
+"You've met him before?"
+
+"Just a little--in town. Being 'after pictures'" Lady Sandgate
+explained, "he has been after my great-grandmother."
+
+"She," said Lady Grace with amusement, "must have found him funny! But
+he can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord
+John, and while you, if you'll be so good, go back to support father--in
+the hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that
+he complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as
+sneaking away."
+
+Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. "I delight in
+his triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it's a
+question of support, aren't you yourself failing him quite as much?"
+
+This had, however, no effect on the girl's confidence. "Ah, my dear, I'm
+not at all the same thing, and as I'm the person in the world he least
+misses--" Well, such a fact spoke for itself.
+
+"You've been free to return and wait for Lord John?"--that was the
+sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as
+speaking.
+
+The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though
+very quietly, to correct her. "I've not come back to wait for Lord
+John."
+
+"Then he hasn't told you--if you've talked--with what idea he has come?"
+
+Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.
+"Kitty has told me--what it suits her to pretend to suppose."
+
+"And Kitty's pretensions and suppositions always go with what
+happens--at the moment, among all her wonderful happenings--to suit
+her?"
+
+Lady Grace let that question answer itself--she took the case up further
+on. "What I can't make out is why this _should_ so suit her!"
+
+"And what _I_ can't!" said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and
+turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless
+presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. "Do you like
+him enough to risk the chance of Kitty's being for once right?"
+
+Lady Grace gave it a thought--with which she moved away. "I don't know
+how much I like him!"
+
+"Nor how little!" cried her friend, who evidently found amusement in the
+tone of it. "And you're not disposed to take the time to find out? He's
+at least better than the others."
+
+"The 'others'?"--Lady Grace was blank for them.
+
+"The others of his set."
+
+"Oh, his set! That wouldn't be difficult--by what I imagine of some of
+them. But he means well enough," the girl added; "he's very charming and
+does me great honour."
+
+It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief
+arrest. "Then may I tell your father?"
+
+This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the
+subject. "Tell my father, please, that I'm expecting Mr. Crimble; of
+whom I've spoken to him even if he doesn't remember, and who bicycles
+this afternoon ten miles over from where he's staying--with some people
+we don't know--to look at the pictures, about which he's awfully keen."
+
+Lady Sandgate took it in. "Ah, like Mr. Bender?"
+
+"No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender."
+
+This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought "May I ask
+then--if one's to meet him--who he is?"
+
+"Oh, father knows--or ought to--that I sat next him, in London, a month
+ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and
+nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of
+Connoisseurship--which is upsetting, as perhaps you're not aware, all
+the old-fashioned canons of art-criticism, everything we've stupidly
+thought right and held dear; that he was to spend Easter in these parts,
+and that he should like greatly to be allowed some day to come over and
+make acquaintance with our things. I told him," Lady Grace wound
+up, "that nothing would be easier; a note from him arrived before
+dinner----"
+
+Lady Sandgate jumped the rest "And it's for him you've come in."
+
+"It's for him I've come in," the girl assented with serenity.
+
+"Very good--though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first just
+tell me _this_--whether when you sent in ten minutes ago for Lord John
+to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?" And she followed
+it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. "Was it because you knew
+why he had arrived?"
+
+The young friend hesitated still. "'Why '?"
+
+"So particularly to speak to you."
+
+"Since he was expected and mightn't know where I was," Lady Grace said
+after an instant, "I wanted naturally to be civil to him."
+
+"And had he time there to tell you," Lady Sand-gate asked, "how very
+civil he wants to be to you?"
+
+"No, only to tell me that his friend--who's off there--was coming; for
+Kitty at once appropriated him and was still in possession when I came
+away." Then, as deciding at last on perfect frankness, Lady Grace went
+on: "If you want to know, I sent for news of him because Kitty insisted
+on my doing so; saying, so very oddly and quite in her own way, that she
+herself didn't wish to 'appear in it.' She had done nothing but say to
+me for an hour, rather worryingly, what you've just said--that it's
+me he's what, like Mr. Bender, she calls 'after'; but as soon as
+he appeared she pounced on him, and I left him--I assure you quite
+resignedly--in her hands."
+
+"She wants"--it was easy for Lady Sandgate to remark--"to talk of you to
+him."
+
+"I don't know _what_ she wants," the girl replied as with rather a tired
+patience; "Kitty wants so many things at once. She always wants money,
+in quantities, to begin with--and all to throw so horribly away; so that
+whenever I see her 'in' so very deep with any one I always imagine her
+appealing for some new tip as to how it's to be come by."
+
+"Kitty's an abyss, I grant you, and with my disinterested devotion to
+your father--in requital of all his kindness to me since Lord Sandgate's
+death and since your mother's--I can never be too grateful to you, my
+dear, for your being so different a creature. But what is she going to
+gain financially," Lady Sand-gate pursued with a strong emphasis on
+her adverb, "by working up our friend's confidence in your listening to
+him--if you _are_ to listen?"
+
+"I haven't in the least engaged to listen," said Lady Grace--"it will
+depend on the music he makes!" But she added with light cynicism:
+"Perhaps she's to gain a commission!"
+
+"On his fairly getting you?" And then as the girl assented by silence:
+"Is he in a position to pay her one?" Lady Sandgate asked.
+
+"I dare say the Duchess is!"
+
+"But do you see the Duchess _producing_ money--with all that Kitty, as
+we're not ignorant, owes her? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds!"--Lady
+Sandgate piled them up.
+
+Her young friend's gesture checked it. "Ah, don't tell me how many--it's
+too sad and too ugly and too wrong!" To which, however, Lady Grace
+added: "But perhaps that will be just her way!" And then as her
+companion seemed for the moment not quite to follow: "By letting Kitty
+off her debt."
+
+"You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?"
+
+"Kitty goes free."
+
+"She has her creditor's release?"
+
+"For every shilling."
+
+"And if he only fails?"
+
+"Why then of course," said now quite lucid Lady Grace, "she throws
+herself more than ever on poor father."
+
+"Poor father indeed!"--Lady Sandgate richly sighed it
+
+It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess.
+"Yes--but he after all and in spite of everything adores her."
+
+"To the point, you mean"--for Lady Sandgate could clearly but
+wonder--"of really sacrificing you?"
+
+The weight of Lady Grace's charming deep eyes on her face made her
+pause while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange
+determined in the girl a grave appeal. "You think I _should_ be
+sacrificed if I married him?"
+
+Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly.
+"_Could_ you marry him?"
+
+Lady Grace waited a moment "Do you mean for Kitty?"
+
+"For himself even--if they should convince you, among them, that he
+cares for you."
+
+Lady Grace had another delay. "Well, he's his awful mother's son."
+
+"Yes--but you wouldn't marry his mother."
+
+"No--but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately
+conscious of her."
+
+"Even when," Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, "she so markedly likes
+you?"
+
+This determined in the girl a fine impatience. "She doesn't 'like' me,
+she only _wants_ me--which is a very different thing; wants me for
+my father's so particularly beautiful position, and my mother's so
+supremely great people, and for everything we have been and have done,
+and still are and still have: except of course poor not-at-all-model
+Kitty."
+
+To this luminous account of the matter Lady Sand-gate turned as to a
+genial sun-burst. "I see indeed--for the general immaculate connection."
+
+The words had no note of irony, but Lady Grace, in her great
+seriousness, glanced with deprecation at the possibility. "Well, we
+_haven't_ had false notes. We've scarcely even had bad moments."
+
+"Yes, you've been beatific!"--Lady Sandgate enviously, quite ruefully,
+felt it. But any further treatment of the question was checked by the
+re-entrance of the footman--a demonstration explained by the concomitant
+appearance of a young man in eyeglasses and with the ends of his
+trousers clipped together as for cycling. "This must be your friend,"
+she had only time to say to the daughter of the house; with which, alert
+and reminded of how she was awaited elsewhere, she retreated before her
+companion's visitor, who had come in with his guide from the vestibule.
+She passed away to the terrace and the gardens, Mr. Hugh Crimble's
+announced name ringing in her ears--to some effect that we are as yet
+not qualified to discern.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Lady Grace had turned to meet Mr. Hugh Crimble, whose pleasure in at
+once finding her lighted his keen countenance and broke into easy words.
+"So awfully kind of you--in the midst of the great doings I noticed--to
+have found a beautiful minute for me."
+
+"I left the great doings, which are almost over, to every one's relief,
+I think," the girl returned, "so that your precious time shouldn't be
+taken to hunt for me."
+
+It was clearly for him, on this bright answer, as if her white hand
+were holding out the perfect flower of felicity. "You came in from your
+revels on purpose--with the same charity you showed me from that first
+moment?" They stood smiling at each other as in an exchange of sympathy
+already confessed--and even as if finding that their relation had grown
+during the lapse of contact; she recognising the effect of what they had
+originally felt as bravely as he might name it. What the fine, slightly
+long oval of her essentially quiet face--quiet in spite of certain vague
+depths of reference to forces of the strong high order, forces involved
+and implanted, yet also rather spent in the process--kept in range
+from under her redundant black hat was the strength of expression, the
+directness of communication, that her guest appeared to borrow from
+the unframed and unattached nippers unceasingly perched, by their
+mere ground-glass rims, as she remembered, on the bony bridge of his
+indescribably authoritative (since it was at the same time decidedly
+inquisitive) young nose. She must, however, also have embraced in this
+contemplation, she must more or less again have interpreted, his main
+physiognomic mark, the degree to which his clean jaw was underhung
+and his lower lip protruded; a lapse of regularity made evident by a
+suppression of beard and moustache as complete as that practised by Mr.
+Bender--though without the appearance consequent in the latter's case,
+that of the flagrantly vain appeal in the countenance for some other
+exhibition of a history, of a process of production, than this so
+superficial one. With the interested and interesting girl sufficiently
+under our attention while we thus try to evoke her, we may even make out
+some wonder in her as to why the so perceptibly protrusive lower lip of
+this acquaintance of an hour or two should positively have contributed
+to his being handsome instead of much more logically interfering with
+it. We might in fact in such a case even have followed her into another
+and no less refined a speculation--the question of whether the surest
+seat of his good looks mightn't after all be his high, fair, if somewhat
+narrow, forehead, crowned with short crisp brown hair and which, after
+a fashion of its own, predominated without overhanging. He spoke after
+they had stood just face to face almost long enough for awkwardness. "I
+haven't forgotten one item of your kindness to me on that rather bleak
+occasion."
+
+"Bleak do you call it?" she laughed. "Why I found it, rather,
+tropical--'lush.' My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of
+the White City."
+
+"Then you made it doubtless bleak for _him_, let us say. _I_ couldn't
+let you alone, I remember, about _this_--it was like a shipwrecked
+signal to a sail on the horizon." "This" obviously meant for the young
+man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender, to be
+conscious of a thick solicitation of the eye--and much more
+than he, doubtless, of a tug at the imagination; and he
+broke--characteristically, you would have been sure--into a great free
+gaiety of recognition.
+
+"Oh, we've nothing particular in the hall," Lady Grace amiably objected.
+
+"Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I'm an ogre," he said--"before a
+new and rare feast!"
+
+She happily took up his figure. "Then won't you begin--as a first
+course--with tea after your ride? If the other, that is--for there has
+been an ogre before you--has left any."
+
+"Some tea, with pleasure"--he looked all his longing; "though when you
+talk of a fellow-feaster I should have supposed that, on such a day
+as this especially, you'd find yourselves running a continuous _table
+d'h�te_."
+
+"Ah, we can't work sports in our gallery and saloon--the banging or
+whacking and shoving amusements that are all most people care for;
+unless, perhaps," Lady Grace went on, "your own peculiar one, as I
+understand you, of playing football with the old benighted traditions
+and attributions you everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old
+idiotic superstitions."
+
+Hugh Crimble went more than half-way to meet this description of his
+fondest activity; he indeed even beckoned it on. "The names and stories
+and styles--the so often vain legend, not to be too invidious--of author
+or subject or school?" But he had a drop, no less, as from the sense of a
+cause sometimes lost. "Ah, that's a game at which we _all_ can play!"
+
+"Though scarcely," Lady Grace suggested, "at which we all can score."
+
+The words appeared indeed to take meaning from his growing impression
+of the place and its charm--of the number of objects, treasures of art,
+that pressed for appreciation of their importance. "Certainly," he said,
+"no one can ever have scored much on sacred spots of _this_ order--which
+express so the grand impunity of their pride, their claims, their
+assurance!"
+
+"We've had great luck," she granted--"as I've just been reminded;
+but ever since those terrible things you told me in town--about the
+tremendous tricks of the whirligig of time and the aesthetic fools'
+paradise in which so many of us live--I've gone about with my heart in
+my mouth. Who knows that while I talk Mr. Bender mayn't be pulling us to
+pieces?"
+
+Hugh Crimble had a shudder of remembrance. "Mr. Bender?"
+
+"The rich American who's going round."
+
+It gave him a sharper shock. "The wretch who bagged Lady Lappington's
+Longhi?"
+
+Lady Grace showed surprise. "Is he a wretch?"
+
+Her visitor but asked to be extravagant. "Rather--the scoundrel. He
+offered his infernal eight thousand down."
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant he had played some trick!"
+
+"I wish he had--he could then have been collared."
+
+"Well," Lady Grace peacefully smiled, "it's no use his offering _us_
+eight thousand--or eighteen or even eighty!"
+
+Hugh Crimble stared as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance,
+almost crude on exquisite lips and contradicting an imputation no one
+would have indecently made. "Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man
+surely doesn't _suppose_ you'd traffic."
+
+She might, while she still smiled at him, have been fairly enjoying the
+friendly horror she produced. "I don't quite know what he supposes. But
+people _have_ trafficked; people do; people are trafficking all round."
+
+"Ah," Hugh Crimble cried, "that's what deprives me of my rest and, as
+a lover of our vast and beneficent art-wealth, poisons my waking hours.
+That art-wealth is at the mercy of a leak there appears no means of
+stopping." She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent
+flood might almost at any moment become copious. "Precious things are
+going out of our distracted country at a quicker rate than the very
+quickest--a century and more ago--of their ever coming in."
+
+She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom
+stirred thought soon found connections and relations. "Well, I suppose
+our art-wealth came in--save for those awkward Elgin Marbles!--mainly
+by purchase too, didn't it? We ourselves largely took it away from
+somewhere, didn't we? We didn't _grow_ it all."
+
+"We grew some of the loveliest flowers--and on the whole to-day the most
+exposed." He had been pulled up but for an instant. "Great Gainsboroughs
+and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and Constables
+and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you'll recognise, a vast garden in
+themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully grown than
+your splendid 'Duchess of Waterbridge'?"
+
+The girl showed herself ready at once to recognise under his eloquence
+anything he would. "Yes--it's our Sir Joshua, I believe, that Mr. Bender
+has proclaimed himself particularly 'after.'"
+
+It brought a cloud to her friend's face. "Then he'll be capable of
+anything."
+
+"Of anything, no doubt, but of making my father capable--! And you
+haven't at any rate," she said, "so much as seen the picture."
+
+"I beg your pardon--I saw it at the Guildhall three years ago; and am
+almost afraid of getting again, with a fresh sense of its beauty, a
+livelier sense of its danger."
+
+Lady Grace, however, was so far from fear that she could even afford
+pity. "Poor baffled Mr. Bender!"
+
+"Oh, rich and confident Mr. Bender!" Crimble cried. "Once given his
+money, his confidence is a horrid engine in itself--there's the rub!
+I dare say"--the young man saw it all--"he has brought his poisonous
+cheque."
+
+She gave it her less exasperated wonder. "One has heard of that, but
+only in the case of some particularly pushing dealer."
+
+"And Mr. Bender, to do him justice, isn't a particularly pushing
+dealer?"
+
+"No," Lady Grace judiciously returned; "I think he's not a dealer at
+all, but just what you a moment ago spoke of yourself as being."
+
+He gave a glance at his possibly wild recent past. "A fond true lover?"
+
+"As we _all_ were in our lucky time--when we rum-aged Italy and Spain."
+
+He appeared to recognise this complication--of Bender's voracious
+integrity; but only to push it away. "Well, I don't know whether the
+best lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers--but I feel to-day that
+they're the best keepers."
+
+The breath of his emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl's
+dimmer fire. "It's as if it were suddenly in the air that you've brought
+us some light or some help--that you may do something really good for
+us."
+
+"Do you mean 'mark down,' as they say at the shops, all your greatest
+claims?"
+
+His chord of sensibility had trembled all gratefully into derision, and
+not to seem to swagger he had put his possible virtue at its lowest.
+This she beautifully showed that she beautifully saw. "I dare say that
+if you did even that we should have to take it from you."
+
+"Then it may very well be," he laughed back, "the reason why I feel,
+under my delightful, wonderful impression, a bit anxious and nervous and
+afraid."
+
+"That shows," she returned, "that you suspect us of horrors hiding from
+justice, and that your natural kindness yet shrinks from handing us
+over!"
+
+Well, clearly, she might put it as she liked--it all came back to his
+being more charmed. "Heaven knows I've wanted a chance at you, but what
+should you say if, having then at last just taken you in in your so
+apparent perfection, I should feel it the better part of valour simply
+to mount my 'bike' again and spin away?"
+
+"I should be sure that at the end of the avenue you'd turn right round
+and come back. You'd think again of Mr. Bender."
+
+"Whom I don't, however, you see--if he's prowling off there--in the
+least want to meet." Crimble made the point with gaiety. "I don't
+know what I mightn't do to him--and yet it's not of my temptation to
+violence, after all, that I'm most afraid. It's of the brutal mistake
+of one's breaking--with one's priggish, precious modernity and
+one's possibly futile discriminations--into a _general_ situation or
+composition, as we say, so serene and sound and right. What should one
+do here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one's breath and
+walk on tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell
+me, instinctively stay outside. I saw that all," the young man went on
+with more weight in his ardour, "I saw it, while we talked in London,
+as your natural setting and your native air--and now ten minutes on the
+spot have made it sink into my spirit. You're a case, all together, of
+enchanted harmony, of perfect equilibrium--there's nothing to be done or
+said."
+
+His friend listened to this eloquence with her eyes lowered, then
+raising them to meet, with a vague insistence, his own; after which
+something she had seen there appeared to determine in her another
+motion. She indicated the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady
+Sandgate's report, rapidly studied and denounced. "For what do you take
+that little picture?"
+
+Hugh Crimble went over and looked. "Why, don't you know? It's a jolly
+little Vandermeer of Delft."
+
+"It's not a base imitation?"
+
+He looked again, but appeared at a loss. "An imitation of Vandermeer?"
+
+"Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp."
+
+It made the young man ring out: "Then Mr. Bender's doubly dangerous!"
+
+"Singly is enough!" Lady Grace laughed. "But you see you _have_ to
+speak."
+
+"Oh, to _him_, rather, after that--if you'll just take me to him."
+
+"Yes then," she said; but even while she spoke Lord John, who had
+returned, by the terrace, from his quarter of an hour passed with Lady
+Imber, was there practically between them; a fact that she had to notice
+for her other visitor, to whom she was hastily reduced to naming him.
+
+His lordship eagerly made the most of this tribute of her attention,
+which had reached his ear; he treated it--her "Oh Lord John!"--as a
+direct greeting. "Ah Lady Grace! I came back particularly to find you."
+
+She could but explain her predicament. "I was taking Mr. Crimble to see
+the pictures." And then more pointedly, as her manner had been virtually
+an introduction of that gentleman, an introduction which Lord John's
+mere noncommittal stare was as little as possible a response to: "Mr.
+Crimble's one of the quite new connoisseurs."
+
+"Oh, I'm at the very lowest round of the ladder. But I aspire!" Hugh
+laughed.
+
+"You'll mount!" said Lady Grace with friendly confidence.
+
+He took it again with gay deprecation. "Ah, if by that time there's
+anything left here to mount _on!_"
+
+"Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won't
+have been able to carry off." To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a
+helpful spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had
+the air of wishing to preserve his detachment: "It's to Lord John that
+we owe Mr. Bender's acquaintance."
+
+Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. "Then do you
+happen to know, sir, what your friend means to _do_ with his spoil?"
+
+The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a
+commercially calculating or interested one. "Oh, not sell it again."
+
+"Then ship it to New York?" the inquirer pursued, defining himself
+somehow as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.
+
+That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed
+relish for being able to displease Lady Grace's odd guest by large
+assent. "As fast as ever he can--and you can land things there _now_,
+can't you? in three or four days."
+
+"I dare say. But can't he be induced to have a little mercy?" Hugh
+sturdily pursued.
+
+Lord John pushed out his lips. "A 'little'? How much do you want?"
+
+"Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand."
+
+"I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender's hand than you can empty
+his purse."
+
+"Ah, the Despoilers!" said Crimble with strong expression. "But it's
+_we_," he added, "who are base."
+
+"'Base'?"--and Lord John's surprise was apparently genuine.
+
+"To want only to 'do business,' I mean, with our treasures, with our
+glories."
+
+Hugh's words exhaled such a sense of peril as to draw at once Lady
+Grace. "Ah, but if we're above that _here_, as you know------!"
+
+He stood smilingly corrected and contrite. "Of course I know--but you
+must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all,
+won't you? the Moretto of Brescia."
+
+"You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?"
+
+"Why, didn't you tell me yourself?" It went on between them for the
+moment quite as if there had been no Lord John.
+
+"Probably, yes," she recalled; "so how I must have swaggered!" After
+which she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of
+urgency. "Will you also come?"
+
+He confessed to a difficulty--which his whole face begged her also to
+take account of. "I hoped you'd be at leisure--for something I've so at
+heart!"
+
+This had its effect; she took a rapid decision and turned persuasively
+to Crimble--for whom, in like manner, there must have been something in
+_her_ face. "Let Mr. Bender himself then show you. And there are things
+in the library too."
+
+"Oh yes, there are things in the library." Lord John, happy in his
+gained advantage and addressing Hugh from the strong ground of an
+initiation already complete, quite sped him on the way.
+
+Hugh clearly made no attempt to veil the penetration with which he was
+moved to look from one of these counsellors to the other, though with a
+ready "Thank-you!" for Lady Grace he the next instant started in pursuit
+of Mr. Bender.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Your friend seems remarkably hot!" Lord John remarked to his young
+hostess as soon as they had been left together.
+
+"He has cycled twenty miles. And indeed," she smiled, "he does appear to
+care for what he cares for!"
+
+Her companion then, during a moment's silence, might have been noting
+the emphasis of her assent. "Have you known him long?"
+
+"No--not long."
+
+"Nor seen him often?"
+
+"Only once--till now."
+
+"Oh!" said Lord John with another pause. But he soon proceeded. "Let us
+leave him then to cool! I haven't cycled twenty miles, but I've motored
+forty very much in the hope of _this_, Lady Grace--the chance of being
+able to assure you that I too care very much for what I care for." To
+which he added on an easier note, as to carry off a slight awkwardness
+while she only waited: "You certainly mustn't let yourself--between us
+all--be worked to death."
+
+"Oh, such days as this--I" She made light enough of her burden.
+
+"They don't come often to _me_ at least, Lady Grace! I hadn't grasped
+in advance the scale of your f�te," he went on; "but since I've the
+great luck to find you alone--!" He paused for breath, however, before
+the full sequence.
+
+She helped him out as through common kindness, but it was a trifle
+colourless. "Alone or in company, Lord John, I'm always very glad to see
+you."
+
+"Then that assurance helps me to wonder if you don't perhaps gently
+guess what it is I want to say." This time indeed she left him to
+his wonder, so that he had to support himself. "I've tried, all
+considerately--these three months--to let you see for yourself how
+I feel. I feel very strongly, Lady Grace; so that at last"--and his
+impatient sincerity took after another instant the jump--"well, I
+regularly worship you. You're my absolute ideal. I think of you the
+whole time."
+
+She measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of pretty
+ribbon. "Are you sure you _know_ me enough?"
+
+"I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!" Nothing now at least
+could have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistake
+showed in her smile he followed it up. "Isn't what you rather mean that
+you haven't cared sufficiently to know _me?_ If so, that can be little
+by little mended, Lady Grace." He was in fact altogether gallant about
+it. "I'm aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but I
+defy you to find a limit to my possible devotion."
+
+She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. "I believe you'd be
+very good to me."
+
+"Well, isn't _that_ something to start with?"--he fairly pounced on it.
+"I'll do any blest thing in life you like, I'll accept any condition you
+impose, if you'll only tell me you see your way."
+
+"Shouldn't I have a little more first to see yours?" she asked. "When
+you say you'll do anything in life I like, isn't there anything you
+yourself want strongly enough to do?"
+
+He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. "Anything that
+will make money, you mean?"
+
+"Make money or make reputation--or even just make the time pass."
+
+"Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?" If that was her
+meaning he could show after an instant that he didn't fear it. "Well,
+your father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me to
+understand that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I've
+noticed, as you doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs a
+fellow----!"
+
+He left the obvious moral for her to take up--which she did, but all
+interrogatively. "The fellow at once comes in for something awfully
+good?"
+
+"I don't in the least mind your laughing at me," Lord John returned,
+"for when I put him the question of the lift he'd give me by speaking
+to you first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty in
+which he leaves you, and yet which doesn't come--take my word!" said the
+young man sagely--"from his being at all indifferent."
+
+"No," she answered--"father isn't indifferent. But father's 'great'"
+
+"Great indeed!"--her friend took it as with full comprehension. This
+appeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought.
+"Too great for _you?_"
+
+"Well, he makes me feel--even as his daughter--my extreme comparative
+smallness."
+
+It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant "He's a _grand
+seigneur_, and a serious one--that's what he is: the very type and model
+of it, down to the ground. So you can imagine," the young man said,
+"what he makes me feel--most of all when he's so awfully good-natured
+to me. His being as 'great' as you say and yet backing me--such as I
+am!--doesn't _that_ strike you as a good note for me, the best you could
+possibly require? For he really _would_ like what I propose to you."
+
+She might have been noting, while she thought, that he had risen to
+ingenuity, to fineness, on the wings of his argument; under the effect
+of which her reply had the air of a concession. "Yes--he would like it."
+
+"Then he _has_ spoken to you?" her suitor eagerly asked.
+
+"He hasn't needed--he has ways of letting one know."
+
+"Yes, yes, he has ways; all his own--like everything else he has. He's
+wonderful."
+
+She fully agreed. "He's wonderful."
+
+The tone of it appeared somehow to shorten at once for Lord John the
+rest of his approach to a conclusion. "So you do see your way?"
+
+"Ah--!" she said with a quick sad shrinkage.
+
+"I mean," her visitor hastened to explain, "if he does put it to you as
+the very best idea he has for you. When he does that--as I believe him
+ready to do--will you really and fairly listen to him? I'm certain,
+honestly, that when you know me better--!" His confidence in short
+donned a bravery.
+
+"I've been feeling this quarter of an hour," the girl returned, "that I
+do know you better."
+
+"Then isn't that all I want?--unless indeed I ought perhaps to ask
+rather if it isn't all _you_ do! At any rate," said Lord John, "I may
+see you again here?"
+
+She waited a moment. "You must have patience with me."
+
+"I _am_ having it But _after_ your father's appeal."
+
+"Well," she said, "that must come first."
+
+"Then you won't dodge it?"
+
+She looked at him straight "I don't dodge, Lord John."
+
+He admired the manner of it "You look awfully handsome as you say
+so--and you see what _that_ does to me." As to attentuate a little the
+freedom of which he went on: "May I fondly hope that if Lady Imber too
+should wish to put in another word for me----?"
+
+"Will I listen to her?"--it brought Lady Grace straight down. "No, Lord
+John, let me tell you at once that I'll do nothing of the sort Kitty's
+quite another affair, and I never listen to her a bit more than I can
+help."
+
+Lord John appeared to feel, on this, that he mustn't too easily, in
+honour, abandon a person who had presented herself to him as an ally.
+"Ah, you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself--in his
+looser moments!--takes pleasure in what she says."
+
+Our young woman's eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, had
+no mercy for its extreme feebleness. "If you mean that she's the most
+reckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as when
+she's at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out her
+interest, she has learnt to 'get round' him till he only sees through
+her eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you
+think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it's not on
+the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his
+youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_."
+
+Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering
+object in his face; but then recovering himself: "He hasn't perhaps an
+absolutely boundless confidence--"
+
+"In any one in the world but himself?"--she had taken him straight up.
+"He hasn't indeed, and that's what we must come to; so that even if he
+likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won't be because
+you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!"
+
+"You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he
+isn't?"
+
+Lady Grace was indeed sure. "Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so
+with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything."
+
+Lord John appeared struck. "Yes--and he still allows her two thousand."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!" the girl
+undisguisedly smiled.
+
+"Then perhaps I oughtn't!"--he glowed with the light of contrition.
+
+"Well, you can't help it now," his companion remarked with amusement.
+
+"You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?" Lord John inquired.
+"I'm sure you're right, and that he will," he continued quite as in good
+faith; "but I want you to understand that I don't care in the least what
+it may be!"
+
+The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet.
+"You're very good to say so!"
+
+If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that
+they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of
+a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to
+them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another
+question. "Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he
+thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?"
+
+Lady Grace's answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the
+person by whom they were now joined. "Lord John desires you should tell
+me, father, how good you think him."
+
+"'Good,' my dear?--good for what?" said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly,
+but looking from one of them to the other.
+
+"I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you."
+
+"Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go
+back and deal with those overwhelming children."
+
+"Ah, they don't overwhelm _you_, father!"--the girl put it with some
+point.
+
+"If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did," he
+replied--"from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred
+painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only
+for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the
+large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his
+back. The bucket, under the stream--"
+
+"Was bound to overflow?" Lady Grace suggested.
+
+"Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not
+unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really," Lord
+Theign insisted, "go and deal with it."
+
+His daughter's smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. "You work
+people up, father, and then leave others to let them down."
+
+"The two things," he promptly replied, "require different natures." To
+which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of
+harshness, "Go!"
+
+It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with
+a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and
+resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared.
+
+"The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!" Lord
+John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just
+slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two
+were left together.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the
+impression his daughter appeared to have given him. "She didn't want
+to go?" And then before Lord John could reply: "What the deuce is the
+matter with her?"
+
+Lord John took his time. "I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble."
+
+"And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?"
+
+"A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have
+invited."
+
+"Where is he then?" Lord Theign demanded.
+
+"Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for."
+
+"Oh!"--it made his lordship easier. "Then he's all right--on such a
+day."
+
+His companion could none the less just wonder. "Hadn't Lady Grace told
+you?"
+
+"That he was coming? Not that I remember." But Lord Theign, perceptibly
+preoccupied, made nothing of this. "We've had other fish to fry, and you
+know the freedom I allow her."
+
+His friend had a vivid gesture. "My dear man, I only ask to profit by
+it!" With which there might well have been in Lord John's face a light
+of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.
+
+Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself
+far from all bourgeois narrowness. "She has her friends by the score--at
+this time of day." There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the
+time of day. "But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your
+own--of whom I've but just heard?"
+
+"Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they'll have met and taken
+care of each other." Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the
+least of Lord John's difficulties. "I mustn't appear to Bender to have
+failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that,
+seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very
+pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn't been perhaps," he continued,
+"quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if
+I'm not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without
+abhorrence. Only I've led her to expect--for our case--that you'll be
+so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her
+yourself."
+
+"Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter's time?" Lord Theign,
+confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet
+with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was
+never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in
+from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown;
+but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed,
+of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required.
+His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all
+respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless,
+almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed
+things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and
+his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this
+rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of
+relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of
+displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with
+himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,
+"sink" a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the
+formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in
+him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small
+wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance
+of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages,
+flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective,
+a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that
+might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion,
+you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any
+opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was
+that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if
+it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of
+fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline,
+of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of
+an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought
+line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might
+somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal
+privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his
+suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding
+paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the
+scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the
+thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought
+of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives.
+Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last
+immediate question on his hands.
+
+"Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety," his companion has
+meanwhile replied to it. "But I was thinking a little, you understand,
+of the importance of our own time."
+
+Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for
+the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for
+interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to
+strain to "understand" in this particular connection--it would be his
+familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the
+work for him. "'Our own' in the sense of yours and mine?"
+
+"Of yours and mine and Lady Imber's, yes--and a good bit, last not
+least, in that of my watching and waiting mother's." This struck no
+prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went
+on: "The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine
+old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on
+the whole question, she _is_, don't you know? What she put to me"--the
+younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--"what she
+put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight
+in the face, you see, was: Do we or don't we, decidedly, take up
+practically her very handsome offer--'very handsome' being, I mean,
+what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather
+decent."
+
+Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. "Kitty has of course
+rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again
+on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the
+ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say," and he took
+himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, "discharges
+her obligations--by her sister's fair hand; not to mention a few other
+trifles for which I naturally provide."
+
+Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet
+but briefly at a loss. "Of course we take into account, don't we? not
+only the fact of my mother's desire (intended, I assure you, to be most
+flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but
+her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over
+and above----"
+
+"Over and above Kitty's release from her damnable payment?"--Lord Theign
+reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. "Of course
+we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn't, my dear fellow, be
+discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so
+little appeal to me: especially as there's nothing, you easily conceive,
+that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family,
+or any other (as a family) that she wouldn't be quite as sure of by just
+staying in her own. The Duchess's idea, at any rate, if I've followed
+you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve
+thousand; with the condition--"
+
+Lord John was already all there. "Definitely, yes, of your settling the
+equivalent on Lady Grace."
+
+"And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?"
+
+"Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace
+herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve."
+
+"And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient
+time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?"
+
+Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his
+friend's general resources, to consider that question seriously. "Surely
+you can have no difficulty whatever--!"
+
+"Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I've had this year to
+let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have
+_liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a
+matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty's horrid incubus?"
+
+"Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_," Lord John brightly
+indicated, "are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will
+only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must
+feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady
+Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she
+has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion."
+
+"She has expressed a very high opinion of you?"--Lord Theign scarce
+glowed with credulity.
+
+But the younger man held his ground. "She has told me she thoroughly
+likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such
+things--she thinks me perfectly charming."
+
+"A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then," said Lord Theign, "what
+does she want more?"
+
+"She very possibly wants nothing--but I'm to that beastly degree,
+you see," his visitor patiently explained, "in the cleft stick of my
+fearfully positive mother's wants. Those are her 'terms,' and I don't
+mind saying that they're most disagreeable to me--I quite hate 'em:
+there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn't
+touch 'em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady
+Grace--wasn't so immensely enlisted."
+
+"I assure you I'd chuck 'em out of window, my boy, if I didn't believe
+you'd be really good to her," Lord Theign returned with the properest
+spirit.
+
+It only encouraged his companion. "You _will_ just tell her then, now
+and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?"
+
+This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. "You truly hold
+that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your
+job?"
+
+"That's the conviction I entertain."
+
+Lord Theign thought again. "Well, even if your conviction's just, that
+still doesn't tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of
+the least use for me to fumble."
+
+"Oh," Lord John laughed, "when a man has such a tremendous assortment
+of breeches--!" He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught
+the great vista of the open rooms. "If it's a question of pockets--and
+what's _in_ 'em--here precisely is my man!" This personage had come back
+from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall,
+exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John's welcome was warm. "I've
+had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining
+you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this
+assistance. "Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home,
+Lord Theign." To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood
+good-humouredly passive to his approach: "I've been round, by your kind
+permission and the light of nature, and haven't required support; though
+if I had there's a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any
+amount." Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive
+hand this contributory figure. "A young, spare, nervous gentleman with
+eye-glasses--I guess he's an author. A friend of yours too?" he asked of
+Lord John.
+
+The answer was prompt and emphatic. "No, the gentleman is no friend at
+all of mine, Mr. Bender."
+
+"A friend of my daughter's," Lord Theign easily explained. "I hope
+they're looking after him."
+
+"Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and
+were so good as to move something," Mr. Bender conscientiously added,
+"so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto."
+
+This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John
+unfavourably. "Up on a chair? I say!"
+
+Mr. Bender took another view. "Why, I got right up myself--a little more
+and I'd almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested"--the
+proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--"in that Moretto."
+And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. "I take
+it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir
+Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it
+didn't lead to our moving any more furniture." On which he paused as to
+enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host's reassurance. "It _has_
+yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you
+prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?"
+
+Lord Theign met Mr. Bender's eyes while this inquirer left these few
+portentous words to speak for themselves. "To the effect that I part to
+you with 'The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge'? No, Mr. Bender, such a
+proposition would leave me intensely cold."
+
+Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. "My dear Bender, I
+_envy_ you!"
+
+"I guess you don't envy me," his friend serenely replied, "as much as I
+envy Lord Theign." And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to
+face each other searchingly and firmly: "What I allude to is an overture
+of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light
+on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I've had some
+experience of first shocks, and I'd be glad to meet you as man to man."
+
+Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended
+no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less
+evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. "As rich man to
+poor man is how I'm to understand it? For me to meet _you_," he added,
+"I should have to be tempted--and I'm not even temptable. So there we
+are," he blandly smiled.
+
+His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John.
+"'The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,' Mr. Bender, is a golden apple
+of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don't lop
+off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age,
+they so much enjoy."
+
+Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. "Then
+if they don't sell their ancestors where in the world are all the
+ancestors bought?"
+
+"Doesn't it for the moment sufficiently answer your question," Lord
+Theign asked, "that they're definitely not bought at Dedborough?"
+
+"Why," said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, "you talk as if it were
+my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand.
+I'd be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn't make you
+kick." And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith.
+"Well, I guess I can wait!"
+
+This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from
+which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and
+more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. "Mr. Bender's
+bound to _have_ something!"
+
+It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his
+friend's mute pressure. "'Something'?"
+
+"Something, Mr. Bender?" Lord John insisted.
+
+It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. "Why, have _you_ an
+interest, Lord John?"
+
+This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
+referred it to Lord Theign. "Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as
+if I have an interest?"
+
+Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and
+then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. "My dear fellow,
+you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean at your expense," Lord John laughed--"I mean at Mr.
+Bender's!"
+
+"Well, go ahead, Lord John," said that gentleman, always easy, but
+always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything--"go ahead, but
+don't sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn't already exist
+in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact
+been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I've got some
+peculiarity, for it doesn't seem as if the thing could be done. If the
+germ is there, on the other hand," Mr. Bender conceded, "it develops
+independently of all encouragement."
+
+Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
+"He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!"
+
+Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
+the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
+toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way
+to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after
+doing so that he made the remark: "Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much
+for you!"
+
+"That makes me the more sorry, sir," said his visitor, "not to have been
+enough for _you!_"
+
+"I risk it, at any rate," Lord John went on--"I put you, Bender, the
+question of whether you wouldn't Move,' as you say, to acquire that
+Moretto."
+
+Mr. Bender's large face had a commensurate gaze. "As I say? I haven't
+said anything of the sort!"
+
+"But you do 'love' you know," Lord John slightly overgrimaced.
+
+"I don't when I don't want to. I'm different from most people--I can
+love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto," Mr. Bender
+continued, "is that it ain't what I'm after."
+
+His "after" had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack
+on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
+John's speaking again across to their host. "The worst he can do for me,
+you see, is to refuse it."
+
+Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling
+about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had
+but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: "It's the very first time
+in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or
+anything else in it, has been offered----!"
+
+It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn't dropped Mr. Bender
+mightn't have been markedly impressed. "Then it must be the very first
+time such an offer has failed."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that we in the least press it!" Lord Theign quite
+naturally laughed.
+
+"Ah, I beg your pardon--I press it very hard!" And Lord John, as taking
+from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far
+as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion's native
+form. "You don't mean to say you don't feel the interest of that
+Moretto?"
+
+Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. "Well, if you had
+seen me up on that chair you'd have thought I did."
+
+"Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed."
+
+"I stepped down quite impressed with that young man."
+
+"Mr. Crimble?"--it came after an instant to Lord John. "With _his_
+opinion, really? Then I hope he's aware of the picture's value."
+
+"You had better ask him," Mr. Bender observed.
+
+"Oh, we don't depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!" Lord John returned.
+
+Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. "Are you aware of the value
+yourself?"
+
+His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their
+entertainer. "Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?"
+
+Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared,
+a bit extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of
+hovering aloof.
+
+"That question needn't trouble us--when I see how much Mr. Bender
+himself knows about it."
+
+"Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at." And
+then as the others waited, "Ten thousand," said Mr. Bender.
+
+"Ten thousand?" The owner of the work showed no emotion.
+
+"Well," said Lord John again in Mr. Bender's style, "what's the matter
+with ten thousand?"
+
+The subject of his gay tribute considered. "There's nothing the matter
+with ten thousand."
+
+"Then," Lord Theign asked, "is there anything the matter with the
+picture?"
+
+"Yes, sir--I guess there is."
+
+It gave an upward push to his lordship's eyebrows. "But what in the
+world----?"
+
+"Well, that's just the question!"
+
+The eyebrows continued to rise. "Does he pretend there's a question of
+whether it _is_ a Moretto?"
+
+"That's what he was up there trying to find out."
+
+"But if the value's, according to himself, ten thousand----?"
+
+"Why, of course," said Mr. Bender, "it's a fine work anyway."
+
+"Then," Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, "what's the matter with
+_you_, Mr. Bender?"
+
+That gentleman was perfectly clear. "The matter with me, Lord Theign, is
+that I've no use for a ten thousand picture."
+
+"'No use?'"--the expression had an oddity. "But what's it your idea to
+do with such things?"
+
+"I mean," Mr. Bender explained, "that a picture of that rank is not what
+I'm after."
+
+"The figure," said his noble host--speaking thus, under pressure,
+commercially--"is beyond what you see your way to?"
+
+But Lord John had jumped at the truth. "The matter with Mr. Bender is
+that he sees his way much further."
+
+"Further?" their companion echoed.
+
+"The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions."
+
+Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. "Well, there would be no
+difficulty about _that_, I think!"
+
+"Ah," said his guest, "you know the basis, sir, on which I'm ready to
+pay."
+
+"On the basis then of the Sir Joshua," Lord John inquired, "how far
+would you go?"
+
+Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety
+by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. "Well, I'd
+go all the way."
+
+"He wants, you see," Lord John elucidated, "an _ideally_ expensive
+thing."
+
+Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant
+spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. "Then why
+shouldn't I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?"
+
+"Because you can't do violence to _that_ master's natural modesty," Mr.
+Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at
+this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once
+supplied a further light. "I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell
+you."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Hugh Crimble had come back from his voyage of discovery, and it was
+visible as he stood there flushed and quite radiant that he had caught
+in his approach Lord Theign's last inquiry and Mr. Bender's reply to it.
+You would have imputed to him on the spot the lively possession of a new
+idea, the sustaining sense of a message important enough to justify his
+irruption. He looked from one to the other of the three men, scattered
+a little by the sight of him, but attached eyes of recognition then
+to Lord Theign's, whom he remained an instant longer communicatively
+smiling at. After which, as you might have gathered, he all confidently
+plunged, taking up the talk where the others had left it. "I should say,
+Lord Theign, if you'll allow me, in regard to what you appear to have
+been discussing, that it depends a good deal on just that question--of
+what your Moretto, at any rate, may be presumed or proved to 'be.' Let
+me thank you," he cheerfully went on, "for your kind leave to go over
+your treasures."
+
+The personage he so addressed was, as we know, nothing if not generally
+affable; yet if that was just then apparent it was through a shade of
+coolness for the slightly heated familiarity of so plain, or at least
+so free, a young man in eye-glasses, now for the first time definitely
+apprehended. "Oh, I've scarcely 'treasures'--but I've some things of
+interest."
+
+Hugh, however, entering the opulent circle, as it were, clearly took
+account of no breath of a chill. "I think possible, my lord, that
+you've a great treasure--if you've really so high a rarity as a splendid
+Manto-vano."
+
+"A 'Mantovano'?" You wouldn't have been sure that his lordship didn't
+pronounce the word for the first time in his life.
+
+"There have been supposed to be only _seven_ real examples about the
+world; so that if by an extraordinary chance you find yourself the
+possessor of a magnificent eighth----"
+
+But Lord John had already broken in. "Why, there you _are_, Mr. Bender!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bender, with whom I've made acquaintance," Hugh returned, "was
+there as it began to work in me--"
+
+"That your Moretto, Lord Theign"--Mr. Bender took their informant
+up--"isn't, after all, a Moretto at all." And he continued amusedly to
+Hugh: "It began to work in you, sir, like very strong drink!"
+
+"Do I understand you to suggest," Lord Theign asked of the startling
+young man, "that my precious picture isn't genuine?"
+
+Well, Hugh knew exactly what he suggested. "As a picture, Lord Theign,
+as a great portrait, one of the most genuine things in Europe. But it
+strikes me as probable that from far back--for reasons!--there has
+been a wrong attribution; that the work has been, in other words,
+traditionally, obstinately miscalled. It has passed for a Moretto, and
+at first I quite took it for one; but I suddenly, as I looked and looked
+and saw and saw, began to doubt, and now I know _why_ I doubted."
+
+Lord Theign had during this speech kept his eyes on the ground; but he
+raised them to Mr. Crimble's almost palpitating presence for the remark:
+"I'm bound to say that I hope you've some very good grounds!"
+
+"I've three or four, Lord Theign; they seem to me of the best--as yet.
+They made me wonder and wonder--and then light splendidly broke."
+
+His lordship didn't stint his attention. "Reflected, you mean, from
+_other_ Mantovanos--that I don't know?"
+
+"I mean from those I know myself," said Hugh; "and I mean from fine
+analogies with one in particular."
+
+"Analogies that in all these years, these centuries, have so remarkably
+not been noticed?"
+
+"Well," Hugh competently explained, "they're a sort of thing the very
+sense of, the value and meaning of, are a highly modern--in fact a quite
+recent growth."
+
+Lord John at this professed with cordiality that he at least quite
+understood. "Oh, we know a lot more about our pictures and things than
+ever our ancestors did!"
+
+"Well, I guess it's enough for _me_," Mr. Bender contributed, "that your
+ancestors knew enough to get 'em!"
+
+"Ah, that doesn't go so far," cried Hugh, "unless we ourselves know
+enough to keep 'em!"
+
+The words appeared to quicken in a manner Lord Theign's view of the
+speaker. "Were _your_ ancestors, Mr. Crimble, great collectors?"
+
+Arrested, it might be, in his general assurance, Hugh wondered and
+smiled. "Mine--collectors? Oh, I'm afraid I haven't any--to speak of.
+Only it has seemed to me for a long time," he added, "that on that head
+we should all feel together."
+
+Lord Theign looked for a moment as if these were rather large
+presumptions; then he put them in their place a little curtly. "It's one
+thing to keep our possessions for ourselves--it's another to keep them
+for other people."
+
+"Well," Hugh good-humouredly returned, "I'm perhaps not so absolutely
+sure of myself, if you press me, as that I sha'n't be glad of a higher
+and wiser opinion--I mean than my own. It would be awfully interesting,
+if you'll allow me to say so, to have the judgment of one or two of the
+great men."
+
+"You're not yourself, Mr. Crimble, one of the great men?" his host asked
+with tempered irony.
+
+"Well, I guess he's going to be, anyhow," Mr. Bender cordially struck
+in; "and this remarkable exhibition of intelligence may just let him
+loose on the world, mayn't it?"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Bender!"--and Hugh obviously tried to look neither
+elated nor snubbed. "I've too much still to learn, but I'm learning
+every day, and I shall have learnt immensely this afternoon."
+
+"Pretty well at my expense, however," Lord Theign laughed, "if you
+demolish a name we've held for generations so dear."
+
+"You may have held the name dear, my lord," his young critic answered;
+"but my whole point is that, if I'm right, you've held the picture
+itself cheap."
+
+"Because a Mantovano," said Lord John, "is so much greater a value?"
+
+Hugh met his eyes a moment "Are you talking of values pecuniary?"
+
+"What values are _not_ pecuniary?"
+
+Hugh might, during his hesitation, have been imagined to stand off a
+little from the question. "Well, some things have in a higher degree
+that one, and some have the associational or the factitious, and some
+the clear artistic."
+
+"And some," Mr. Bender opined, "have them _all_--in the highest degree.
+But what you mean," he went on, "is that a Mantovano would come higher
+under the hammer than a Moretto?"
+
+"Why, sir," the young man returned, "there aren't any, as I've just
+stated, _to_ 'come.' I account--or I easily can--for every one of the
+very small number."
+
+"Then do you consider that you account for this one?"
+
+"I believe I shall if you'll give me time."
+
+"Oh, time!" Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. "But we'll give you all we've
+got--only I guess it isn't much." And he appeared freely to invite their
+companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however, they
+watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had
+gone on: "How much higher--if your idea is correct about it--would Lord
+Theign's picture come?"
+
+Hugh turned to that nobleman. "Does Mr. Bender mean come to _him_, my
+lord?"
+
+Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done
+yet at his other invader. "I don't know _what_ Mr. Bender means!" With
+which he turned off.
+
+"Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one!
+But how _much_ higher?" the American continued to Hugh.
+
+"How much higher to _you?_"
+
+"Oh, I can size _that_. How much higher as a Mantovano?"
+
+Unmistakably--for us at least--our young man was gaining time; he had
+the instinct of circumspection and delay. "To any one?"
+
+"To any one."
+
+"Than as a Moretto?" Hugh continued.
+
+It even acted on Lord John's nerves. "That's what we're talking
+about--really!"
+
+But Hugh still took his ease; as if, with his eyes first on Bender
+and then on Lord Theign, whose back was practically presented, he were
+covertly studying signs. "Well," he presently said, "in view of the very
+great interest combined with the very great rarity, more than--ah more
+than can be estimated off-hand."
+
+It made Lord Theign turn round. "But a fine Moretto has a very great
+rarity and a very great interest."
+
+"Yes--but not on the whole the same amount of either."
+
+"No, not on the whole the same amount of either!"--Mr. Bender
+judiciously echoed it. "But how," he freely pursued, "are you going to
+find out?"
+
+"Have I your permission, Lord Theign," Hugh brightly asked, "to attempt
+to find out?"
+
+The question produced on his lordship's part a visible, a natural
+anxiety. "What would it be your idea then to _do_ with my property?"
+
+"Nothing at all here--it could all be done, I think, at Verona. What
+besets, what quite haunts me," Hugh explained, "is the vivid image of a
+Mantovano--one of the glories of the short list--in a private collection
+in that place. The conviction grows in me that the two portraits must
+be of the same original. In fact I'll bet my head," the young man quite
+ardently wound up, "that the wonderful subject of the Verona picture, a
+very great person clearly, is none other than the very great person of
+yours."
+
+Lord Theign had listened with interest. "Mayn't he be that and yet from
+another hand?"
+
+"It isn't another hand"--oh Hugh was quite positive. "It's the hand of
+the very same painter."
+
+"How can you prove it's the same?"
+
+"Only by the most intimate internal evidence, I admit--and evidence that
+of course has to be estimated."
+
+"Then who," Lord Theign asked, "is to estimate it?"
+
+"Well,"--Hugh was all ready--"will you let Pap-pendick, one of the first
+authorities in Europe, a good friend of mine, in fact more or less my
+master, and who is generally to be found at Brussels? I happen to know
+he knows your picture--he once spoke to me of it; and he'll go and look
+again at the Verona one, he'll go and judge our issue, if I apply to
+him, in the light of certain new tips that I shall be able to give him."
+
+Lord Theign appeared to wonder. "If you 'apply' to him?"
+
+"Like a shot, I believe, if I ask it of him--as a service."
+
+"A service to _you?_ He'll be very obliging," his lordship smiled.
+
+"Well, I've obliged _him!_" Hugh readily retorted.
+
+"The obligation will be to we"--Lord Theign spoke more formally.
+
+"Well, the satisfaction," said Hugh, "will be to all of us. The things
+Pappendick has seen he intensely, ineffaceably keeps in mind, to every
+detail; so that he'll tell me--as no one else really can--if the Verona
+man is _your_ man."
+
+"But then," asked Mr. Bender, "we've got to believe anyway what he
+says?"
+
+"The market," said Lord John with emphasis, "would have to believe
+it--that's the point."
+
+"Oh," Hugh returned lightly, "the market will have nothing to do with
+it, I hope; but I think you'll feel when he has spoken that you really
+know where you are."
+
+Mr. Bender couldn't doubt of that. "Oh, if he gives us a bigger thing we
+won't complain. Only, how long will it take him to get there? I want him
+to start right away."
+
+"Well, as I'm sure he'll be deeply interested----"
+
+"We _may_"--Mr. Bender took it straight up--"get news next week?"
+
+Hugh addressed his reply to Lord Theign; it was already a little too
+much as if he and the American between them were snatching the case from
+that possessor's hands. "The day I hear from Pappendick you shall have a
+full report. And," he conscientiously added, "if I'm proved to have been
+unfortunately wrong----!"
+
+His lordship easily pointed the moral. "You'll have caused me some
+inconvenience."
+
+"Of course I shall," the young man unreservedly agreed--"like a wanton
+meddling ass!" His candour, his freedom had decidedly a note of their
+own. "But my conviction, after those moments with your picture, was too
+strong for me not to speak--and, since you allow it, I face the danger
+and risk the test."
+
+"I allow it of course in the form of business." This produced in Hugh a
+certain blankness. "'Business'?" "If I consent to the inquiry I pay for
+the inquiry." Hugh demurred. "Even if I turn out mistaken?" "You make me
+in any event your proper charge." The young man thought again, and then
+as for vague accommodation: "Oh, my charge won't be high!"
+
+"Ah," Mr. Bender protested, "it ought to be handsome if the thing's
+marked _up_!" After which he looked at his watch. "But I guess I've got
+to go, Lord Theign, though your lovely old Duchess--for it's to _her_
+I've lost my heart--does cry out for me again."
+
+"You'll find her then still there," Lord John observed with emphasis,
+but with his eyes for the time on Lord Theign; "and if you want another
+look at her I'll presently come and take one too."
+
+"I'll order your car to the garden-front," Lord Theign added to this;
+"you'll reach it from the saloon, but I'll see you again first."
+
+Mr. Bender glared as with the round full force of his pair of motor
+lamps. "Well, if you're ready to talk about anything, I am. Good-bye,
+Mr. Crimble."
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Bender." But Hugh, addressing their host while his
+fellow-guest returned to the saloon, broke into the familiarity of
+confidence. "As if you _could_ be ready to 'talk'!"
+
+This produced on the part of the others present a mute exchange that
+could only have denoted surprise at all the irrepressible young outsider
+thus projected upon them took for granted. "I've an idea," said Lord
+John to his friend, "that you're quite ready to talk with _me_."
+
+Hugh then, with his appetite so richly quickened, could but rejoice.
+"Lady Grace spoke to me of things in the library."
+
+"You'll find it _that_ way"--Lord Theign gave the indication.
+
+"Thanks," said Hugh elatedly, and hastened away.
+
+Lord John, when he had gone, found relief in a quick comment. "Very
+sharp, no doubt--but he wants taking down."
+
+The master of Dedborough wouldn't have put it so crudely, but the young
+expert did bring certain things home. "The people my daughters, in the
+exercise of a wild freedom, do pick up----!"
+
+"Well, don't you see that all you've got to do--on the question we're
+dealing with--is to claim your very own wild freedom? Surely I'm right
+in feeling you," Lord John further remarked, "to have jumped at once
+to my idea that Bender is heaven-sent--and at what they call the
+psychologic moment, don't they?--to point that moral. Why look anywhere
+else for a sum of money that--smaller or greater--you can find with
+perfect ease in that extraordinarily bulging pocket?"
+
+Lord Theign, slowly pacing the hall again, threw up his hands. "Ah, with
+'perfect ease' can scarcely be said!"
+
+"Why not?--when he absolutely thrusts his dirty dollars down your
+throat."
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking of ease to _him_," Lord Theign returned--"I'm
+talking of ease to myself. I shall have to make a sacrifice."
+
+"Why not then--for so great a convenience--gallantly make it?"
+
+"Ah, my dear chap, if you want me to sell my Sir Joshua----!"
+
+But the horror in the words said enough, and Lord John felt its chill.
+"I don't make a point of that--God forbid! But there are other things to
+which the objection wouldn't apply."
+
+"You see how it applies--in the case of the Moret-to--for _him_. A mere
+Moretto," said Lord Theign, "is too cheap--for a Yankee 'on the spend.'"
+
+"Then the Mantovano wouldn't be."
+
+"It remains to be proved that it _is_ a Mantovano."
+
+"Well," said Lord John, "go into it."
+
+"Hanged if I won't!" his friend broke out after a moment. "It _would_
+suit me. I mean"--the explanation came after a brief intensity of
+thought--"the possible size of his cheque would."
+
+"Oh," said Lord John gaily, "I guess there's no limit to the possible
+size of his cheque!"
+
+"Yes, it would suit me, it would suit me!" the elder man, standing
+there, audibly mused. But his air changed and a lighter question came
+up to him as he saw his daughter reappear at the door from the terrace.
+"Well, the infant horde?" he immediately put to her.
+
+Lady Grace came in, dutifully accounting for them. "They've marched
+off--in a huge procession."
+
+"Thank goodness! And our friends?"
+
+"All playing tennis," she said--"save those who are sitting it out." To
+which she added, as to explain her return: "Mr. Crimble has gone?"
+
+Lord John took upon him to say. "He's in the library, to which you
+addressed him--making discoveries."
+
+"Not then, I hope," she smiled, "to our disadvantage!"
+
+"To your very great honour and glory." Lord John clearly valued the
+effect he might produce.
+
+"Your Moretto of Brescia--do you know what it really and spendidly
+is?" And then as the girl, in her surprise, but wondered: "A Mantovano,
+neither more nor less. Ever so much more swagger."
+
+"A Mantovano?" Lady Grace echoed. "Why, how tremendously jolly!"
+
+Her father was struck. "Do you know the artist--of whom I had never
+heard?"
+
+"Yes, something of the little that _is_ known." And she rejoiced as her
+knowledge came to her. "He's a tremendous swell, because, great as he
+was, there are but seven proved examples----"
+
+"With this of yours," Lord John broke in, "there are eight."
+
+"Then why haven't I known about him?" Lord Theign put it as if so many
+other people were guilty for this.
+
+His daughter was the first to plead for the vague body. "Why, I suppose
+in order that you should have exactly this pleasure, father."
+
+"Oh, pleasures not desired are like acquaintances not sought--they
+rather bore one!" Lord Theign sighed. With which he moved away from her.
+
+Her eyes followed him an instant--then she smiled at their guest. "Is he
+bored at having the higher prize--if you're sure it _is_ the higher?"
+
+"Mr. Crimble is sure--because if he isn't," Lord John added, "he's a
+wretch."
+
+"Well," she returned, "as he's certainly not a wretch it must be true.
+And fancy," she exclaimed further, though as more particularly for
+herself, "our having suddenly incurred this immense debt to him!"
+
+"Oh, I shall pay Mr. Crimble!" said her father, who had turned round.
+
+The whole question appeared to have provoked in Lord John a rise of
+spirits and a flush of humour. "Don't you let him stick it on."
+
+His host, however, bethinking himself, checked him. "Go _you_ to Mr.
+Bender straight!"
+
+Lord John saw the point. "Yes--till he leaves. But I shall find you
+here, shan't I?" he asked with all earnestness of Lady Grace.
+
+She had an hesitation, but after a look at her father she assented.
+"I'll wait for you."
+
+"Then _� tant�t!_" It made him show for happy as, waving his hand at
+her, he proceeded to seek Mr. Bender in presence of the object that most
+excited that gentleman's appetite--to say nothing of the effect involved
+on Lord John's own.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved--it might have been
+nervously--about the place a little, but soon broke ground. "He'll have
+told you, I understand, that I've promised to speak to you for him. But
+I understand also that he has found something to say for himself."
+
+"Yes, we talked--a while since," the girl said. "At least _he_ did."
+
+"Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace."
+
+"Oh, he speaks very well--and I've never disliked him."
+
+It pulled her father up. "Is that _all_--when I think so much of him?"
+
+She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone
+far; but she waited a little. "Do you think very, _very_ much?"
+
+"Surely I've made my good opinion clear to you!"
+
+Again she had a pause. "Oh yes, I've seen you like him and believe in
+him--and I've found him pleasant and clever."
+
+"He has never had," Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained,
+"what I call a real show." But the character under discussion could
+after all be summed up without searching analysis. "I consider
+nevertheless that there's plenty in him."
+
+It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. "He strikes
+me as naturally quick and--well, nice. But I agree with you than he
+hasn't had a chance."
+
+"Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to
+one I dare say you'll find your reward."
+
+For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her
+companion's manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped.
+Didn't he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn't
+his visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and
+indeed rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? "Do you
+desire it very particularly?" was, however, all she at last brought out.
+
+"I should like it exceedingly--if you act from conviction. Then of
+course only; but of one thing I'm myself convinced--of what he thinks of
+yourself and feels for you."
+
+"Then would you mind my waiting a little?" she asked. "I mean to be
+absolutely sure of myself." After which, on his delaying to agree, she
+added frankly, as to help her case: "Upon my word, father, I should like
+to do what would please you."
+
+But it determined in him a sharper impatience. "Ah, what would please
+_me!_ Don't put it off on 'me'! Judge absolutely for yourself"--he
+slightly took himself up--"in the light of my having consented to do for
+him what I always _hate_ to do: deviate from my normal practice of never
+intermeddling. If I've deviated now you can judge. But to do so all
+round, of course, take--in reason!--your time."
+
+"May I ask then," she said, "for still a little more?"
+
+He looked for this, verily, as if it was not in reason. "You know," he
+then returned, "what he'll feel that a sign of."
+
+"Well, I'll tell him what I mean."
+
+"Then I'll send him to you."
+
+He glanced at his watch and was going, but after a "Thanks, father," she
+had stopped him. "There's one thing more." An embarrassment showed in
+her manner, but at the cost of some effect of earnest abruptness she
+surmounted it. "What does your American--Mr. Bender--want?"
+
+Lord Theign plainly felt the challenge. "'My' American? He's none of
+mine!"
+
+"Well then Lord John's."
+
+"He's none of his either--more, I mean, than any one else's. He's every
+one's American, literally--to all appearance; and I've not to tell
+_you_, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people stalk
+in and out here."
+
+"No, father--certainly," she said. "You're splendidly generous."
+
+His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on
+that; but he added as if it were enough: "What the man must by this time
+want more than anything else is his car."
+
+"Not then anything of ours?" she still insisted.
+
+"Of 'ours'?" he echoed with a frown. "Are you afraid he has an eye to
+something of _yours?_"
+
+"Why, if we've a new treasure--which we certainly have if we possess
+a Mantovano--haven't we all, even I, an immense interest in it?" And
+before he could answer, "Is _that_ exposed?" she asked.
+
+Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any
+illusion to the "exposure" of the objects they so solidly sheltered was
+obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a
+stroke both his own reassurance and his daughter's. "How can there be a
+question of it when he only wants Sir Joshuas?"
+
+"He wants ours?" the girl gasped.
+
+"At absolutely any price."
+
+"But you're not," she cried, "discussing it?"
+
+He hesitated as between chiding and contenting her--then he handsomely
+chose. "My dear child, for what do you take me?" With which he
+impatiently started, through the long and stately perspective, for the
+saloon.
+
+She sank into a chair when he had gone; she sat there some moments in a
+visible tension of thought, her hands clasped in her lap and her dropped
+eyes fixed and unperceiving; but she sprang up as Hugh Crimble, in
+search of her, again stood before her. He presented himself as with
+winged sandals.
+
+"What luck to find you! I must take my spin back."
+
+"You've seen everything as you wished?"
+
+"Oh," he smiled, "I've seen wonders."
+
+She showed her pleasure. "Yes, we've got some things."
+
+"So Mr. Bender says!" he laughed. "You've got five or six--"
+
+"Only five or six?" she cried in bright alarm.
+
+"'Only'?" he continued to laugh. "Why, that's enormous, five or six
+things of the first importance! But I think I ought to mention to you,"
+he added, "a most barefaced 'Rubens' there in the library."
+
+"It isn't a Rubens?"
+
+"No more than I'm a Ruskin."
+
+"Then you'll brand us--expose us for it?"
+
+"No, I'll let you off--I'll be quiet if you're good, if you go straight.
+I'll only hold it _in terrorem_. One can't be sure in these dreadful
+days--that's always to remember; so that if you're not good I'll come
+down on you with it. But to balance against that threat," he went on,
+"I've made the very grandest find. At least I believe I have!"
+
+She was all there for this news. "Of the Manto-vano--hidden in the other
+thing?"
+
+Hugh wondered--almost as if she had been before him. "You don't mean to
+say _you've_ had the idea of that?"
+
+"No, but my father has told me."
+
+"And is your father," he eagerly asked, "really gratified?"
+
+With her conscious eyes on him--her eyes could clearly be very conscious
+about her father--she considered a moment. "He always prefers old
+associations and appearances to new; but I'm sure he'll resign himself
+if you see your way to a certainty."
+
+"Well, it will be a question of the weight of expert opinion that I
+shall invoke. But I'm not afraid," he resolutely said, "and I shall
+make the thing, from its splendid rarity, the crown and flower of your
+glory."
+
+Her serious face shone at him with a charmed gratitude. "It's awfully
+beautiful then your having come to us so. It's awfully beautiful your
+having brought us this way, in a flash--as dropping out of a chariot
+of fire--more light and what you apparently feel with myself as more
+honour."
+
+"Ah, the beauty's in your having yourself done it!" he returned. He
+gave way to the positive joy of it. "If I've brought the 'light' and the
+rest--that's to say the very useful information--who in the world was it
+brought _me?_"
+
+She had a gesture of protest "You'd have come in some other way."
+
+"I'm not so sure! I'm beastly shy--little as I may seem to show it: save
+in great causes, when I'm horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now
+at any rate I only know what _has_ been." She turned off for it, moving
+away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for unrest;
+and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. "But does
+anything in it all," he asked, "trouble you?"
+
+She faced about across the wider space, and there was a different note
+in what she brought out. "I don't know what forces me so to _tell_ you
+things."
+
+"'Tell' me?" he stared. "Why, you've told me nothing more monstrous than
+that I've been welcome!"
+
+"Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of
+our not 'going straight'? When you said you'd expose our bad--or is it
+our false?--Rubens in the event of a certain danger."
+
+"Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed"--he laughed again as with
+relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: "Why, to let
+anything--of your best!--ever leave Dedborough. By which I mean really
+of course leave the country." She turned again on this, and something
+in her air made him wonder. "I hope you don't feel there _is_ such a
+danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was unthinkable."
+
+"Well, it _was_, to me, half an hour ago," she said as she came nearer.
+"But if it has since come up?"
+
+"'If' it has! But _has_ it? In the form of that monster? What Mr. Bender
+wants is the great Duchess," he recalled.
+
+"And my father won't sell _her_? No, he won't sell the great
+Duchess--there I feel safe. But he greatly needs a certain sum of
+money--or he thinks he does--and I've just had a talk with him."
+
+"In which he has told you that?"
+
+"He has told me nothing," Lady Grace said--"or else told me quite other
+things. But the more I think of them the more it comes to me that he
+feels urged or tempted--"
+
+"To despoil and denude these walls?" Hugh broke in, looking about in his
+sharper apprehension.
+
+"Yes, to satisfy, to save my sister. _Now_ do you think our state so
+ideal?" she asked--but without elation for her hint of triumph.
+
+He had no answer for this save "Ah, but you terribly interest me. May I
+ask what's the matter with your sister?"
+
+Oh, she wanted to go on straight now! "The matter is--in the first
+place--that she's too dazzlingly, dreadfully beautiful."
+
+"More beautiful than you?" his sincerity easily risked.
+
+"Millions of times." Sad, almost sombre, she hadn't a shade of coquetry.
+"Kitty has debts--great heaped-up gaming debts."
+
+"But to such amounts?"
+
+"Incredible amounts it appears. And mountains of others too. She throws
+herself all on our father."
+
+"And he _has_ to pay them? There's no one else?" Hugh asked.
+
+She waited as if he might answer himself, and then as he apparently
+didn't, "He's only afraid there _may_ be some else--that's how she makes
+him do it," she said. And "Now do you think," she pursued, "that I don't
+tell you things?"
+
+He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she
+told him. "Oh, oh, oh!" And then, in the great place, while as, just
+spent by the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he
+took them all in. "That's the situation that, as you say, may force his
+hand."
+
+"It absolutely, I feel, does force it." And the renewal of her appeal
+brought her round. "Isn't it too lovely?"
+
+His frank disgust answered. "It's too damnable!"
+
+"And it's you," she quite terribly smiled, "who--by the 'irony of
+fate'!--have given him help."
+
+He smote his head in the light of it. "By the Mantovano?"
+
+"By the possible Mantovano--as a substitute for the impossible Sir
+Joshua. You've made him aware of a value."
+
+"Ah, but the value's to be fixed!"
+
+"Then Mr. Bender will fix it!"
+
+"Oh, but--as he himself would say--I'll fix Mr. Bender!" Hugh declared.
+"And he won't buy a pig in a poke."
+
+This cleared the air while they looked at each other; yet she had
+already asked: "What in the world can you do, and how in the world can
+you do it?"
+
+Well, he was too excited for decision. "I don't quite see now, but give
+me time." And he took out his watch as already to measure it. "Oughtn't
+I before I go to say a word to Lord Theign?"
+
+"Is it your idea to become a lion in his path?"
+
+"Well, say a cub--as that's what I'm afraid he'll call me! But I think I
+should speak to him."
+
+She drew a conclusion momentarily dark. "He'll have to learn in that
+case that I've told you of my fear."
+
+"And is there any good reason why he shouldn't?"
+
+She kept her eyes on him and the darkness seemed to clear. "No!" she at
+last replied, and, having gone to touch an electric bell, was with him
+again. "But I think I'm rather sorry for you."
+
+"Does that represent a reason why I should be so for you?"
+
+For a little she said nothing; but after that: "None whatever!"
+
+"Then is the sister of whom you speak Lady Imber?"
+
+Lady Grace, at this, raised her hand in caution: the butler had arrived,
+with due gravity, in answer to her ring; to whom she made known her
+desire. "Please say to his lordship--in the saloon or wherever--that
+Mr. Crimble must go." When Banks had departed, however, accepting the
+responsibility of this mission, she answered her friend's question. "The
+sister of whom I speak is Lady Imber."
+
+"She loses then so heavily at bridge?"
+
+"She loses more than she wins."
+
+Hugh gazed as with interest at these oddities of the great. "And yet she
+still plays?"
+
+"What else, in her set, should she do?"
+
+This he was quite unable to say; but he could after a moment's
+exhibition of the extent to which he was out of it put a question
+instead. "So _you're_ not in her set?"
+
+"I'm not in her set."
+
+"Then decidedly," he said, "I don't want to save her. I only want--"
+
+He was going on, but she broke in: "I know what you want!"
+
+He kept his eyes on her till he had made sure--and this deep exchange
+between them had a beauty. "So you're now _with_ me?"
+
+"I'm now _with_ you!"
+
+"Then," said Hugh, "shake hands on it"
+
+He offered her his hand, she took it, and their grasp became, as you
+would have seen in their fine young faces, a pledge in which they stood
+a minute locked. Lord Theign came upon them from the saloon in the midst
+of the process; on which they separated as with an air of its having
+consisted but of Hugh's leave-taking. With some such form of mere
+civility, at any rate, he appeared, by the manner in which he addressed
+himself to Hugh, to have supposed them occupied.
+
+"I'm sorry my daughter can't keep you; but I must at least thank you for
+your interesting view of my picture."
+
+Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of
+this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with
+a sense of possibly awkward consequences: "May I--before you're sure of
+your indebtedness--put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?" It
+sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous--as was in fact
+testified to by his lordship's quick stiff stare, full of wonder at
+so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. "If I
+contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of
+the work you speak of, may I have from you an assurance that my success
+isn't to serve as a basis for any peril--or possibility--of its leaving
+the country?"
+
+Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this,
+turned a shade pale. "You ask of me an 'assurance'?"
+
+Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look
+of having counted the cost of his step. "I'm afraid I _must_, you see."
+
+It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. "And
+pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?"
+
+"By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a
+service."
+
+Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called
+spirit. "A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir--and
+with which you may take it from me that I'm already quite prepared to
+dispense."
+
+"I'm sorry to appear indiscreet," our young man returned; "I'm sorry to
+have upset you in any way. But I can't overcome my anxiety--"
+
+Lord Theign took the words from his lips. "And you therefore invite
+me--at the end of half an hour in this house!--to account to you for my
+personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to
+your hands?"
+
+Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that
+stretched about him--the great loz-enged marble floor that might have
+figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to
+"stand." "I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed
+not to have seized any chance to appeal to you." Whatever difficulty he
+had had shyly to face didn't exist for him now. "I entreat you to think
+again, to think _well_, before you deprive us of such a source of just
+envy."
+
+"And you regard your entreaty as helped," Lord Theign asked, "by the
+beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?" Then as his
+monitor, arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who,
+showing in her face all the pain of the business, stood off at the
+distance to which a woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to
+violence as precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having
+turned: "I ask you that not less than I should like to know whom you
+speak of as 'deprived' of property that happens--for reasons that I
+don't suppose you also quarrel with!--to be mine."
+
+"Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign," Hugh said, "but I
+speak of _all_ of us--of all the people of England; who would deeply
+deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear
+you, I beseech you mercifully to consider."
+
+"The interest they bear me?"--the master of Dedborough fairly bristled
+with wonder. "Pray how the devil do they show it?"
+
+"I think they show it in all sorts of ways"--and Hugh's critical smile,
+at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner
+seeming to convey that he meant many things.
+
+"Understand then, please," said Lord Theign with every inch of his
+authority, "that they'll show it best by minding their own business
+while I very particularly mind mine."
+
+"You simply do, in other words," Hugh explicitly concluded, "what
+happens to be convenient to you."
+
+"In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to _you!_
+So that I need no longer detain you," Lord Theign added with the last
+dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
+
+The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while,
+unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the
+cycling-cap he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival.
+"I apologise, my lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your
+hospitality. But," he went on with his uncommended cheer, "my interest
+in your picture remains."
+
+Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere
+watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the
+first time. "And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and
+grows."
+
+It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone,
+judged her contribution superfluous. "I'm happy to hear it, Grace--but
+yours is another affair."
+
+"I think on the contrary that it's quite the same one," she
+returned--"since it's on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to
+you what he has." The resolution she had gathered while she awaited her
+chance sat in her charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter
+paternal glare. "I let him know that I supposed you to think of
+profiting by the importance of Mr. Bender's visit."
+
+"Then you might have spared, my dear, your--I suppose and hope
+well-meant--interpretation of my mind." Lord Theign showed himself at
+this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without
+having been in the wrong. "Mr. Bender's visit will terminate--as soon
+as he has released Lord John--without my having profited in the smallest
+particular."
+
+Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. "It was
+Lady Grace's anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her,
+that my idea about the Moretto would add to your power--well," he pushed
+on not without awkwardness, "of 'realising' advantageously on such a
+prospective rise."
+
+Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to
+Lady Grace. "Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any
+association with this gentleman's ideas--whether about the Moretto or
+about anything else--his further application of them ceases from this
+moment to concern us."
+
+The girl's rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across
+their companion. "Will you make your inquiry for _me_ then?"
+
+The light again kindled in him. "With all the pleasure in life!" He
+had found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for
+departure, with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the
+direction from which he had entered.
+
+Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to
+Lady Grace. "I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public
+defiance of me!"
+
+They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance
+she met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms
+into which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not
+following it up. She pronounced in quick warning "Lord John!"--for
+their friend, released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was
+already there.
+
+He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. "Bender's at last
+off, but"--he indicated the direction of the garden front--"you may
+still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate."
+
+Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained.
+He looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from
+his daughter's suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious
+young woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had
+a gesture of almost desperate indifference and passed quickly out by the
+door to the terrace.
+
+It had left Lord John gaping. "What on earth's the matter with your
+father?"
+
+"What on earth indeed?" Lady Grace unaidingly asked. "Is he discussing
+with that awful man?"
+
+"Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?" Lord John showed
+surprise--which might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he
+shook everything off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old
+Bender away. "My dear girl, what do _we_ care--?"
+
+"I care immensely, I assure you," she interrupted, "and I ask of you,
+please, to tell me!"
+
+Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected,
+threw him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. "Ah, it's not
+for such a matter I'm here, Lady Grace--I'm here with that fond question
+of my own." And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement
+motion of protest: "I've come for your kind answer--the answer your
+father instructed me to count on."
+
+"I've no kind answer to give you!"--she raised forbidding hands. "I
+entreat you to leave me alone."
+
+There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as
+if stricken by violence. "In God's name then what has happened--when you
+almost gave me your word?"
+
+"What has happened is that I've found it impossible to listen to you."
+And she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
+
+He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in
+her quick circuit of the hall. "That's all you've got to say to me after
+what has passed between us?"
+
+He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her
+passionate denial set him a limit. "I've got to say--sorry as I am--that
+if you _must_ have an answer it's this: that never, Lord John, never,
+can there be anything more between us." And her gesture cleared her
+path, permitting her to achieve her flight. "Never, no, never," she
+repeated as she went--"never, never, never!" She got off by the door at
+which she had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and
+defeated, left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a
+chair and remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the
+great blank splendour.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by
+the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person
+coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr.
+Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway
+forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample,
+lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection
+with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not
+immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.
+
+"But Mr. Crimble------?"
+
+"Here he is, my lady." And he made way for that gentleman, who
+emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt
+withdrawal.
+
+"I went in for a minute, with your servant's permission," Hugh
+explained, "to see your famous Lawrence--which is splendid; he was so
+good as to arrange the light." The young man's dress was of a form less
+relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft
+felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the
+limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.
+
+Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
+act. "Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do--and even seems to
+have ended by taking her for his very own."
+
+"One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of
+her line," Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement
+of replying; "and I must make sure of another look at her when I've a
+good deal more time."
+
+His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. "You hadn't then come
+_for_ the poor dear?" And then as he obviously hadn't, but for something
+quite else: "I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be
+coveted--!" It dropped with a yearning sigh.
+
+"You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?" Hugh asked. "Ah, I
+shall never do their work--unless to betray them: _that_ I shouldn't in
+the least mind!--and I'm here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your
+consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if
+she can kindly give me time."
+
+"You've known then of her being with me?"
+
+"I've known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,"
+he explained; "of her wishing not to go to her sister's, and of Lord
+Theign's having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of
+proceeding, to some foreign part."
+
+"And you've learnt it from having seen her--these three or four weeks?"
+
+"I've met her--but just barely--two or three times: at a 'private view'
+at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn't told
+you?"
+
+Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her
+thick lustre. "I wanted to see how much _you'd_ tell." She waited even
+as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. "Once again at
+dinner?"
+
+"Yes, but alas not near her!"
+
+"Once then at a private view?--when, with the squash they usually are,
+you might have been very near her indeed!"
+
+The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
+"Yes--it _was_ a squash!"
+
+"And once," his hostess pursued, "in the lobby of the opera?"
+
+"After 'Tristan'--yes; but with some awful grand people I didn't know."
+
+She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. "Oh, the Pennimans are
+nobody! But now," she asked, "you've come, you say, on 'business'?"
+
+"Very important, please--which accounts for the hour I've ventured and
+the appearance I present."
+
+"I don't ask you too much to 'account,'" Lady Sandgate kindly said; "but
+I can't not wonder if she hasn't told you what things have happened."
+
+He cast about. "She has had no chance to tell me anything--beyond the
+fact of her being here."
+
+"Without the reason?"
+
+"'The reason'?" he echoed.
+
+She gave it up, going straighter. "She's with me then as an old firm
+friend. Under my care and protection."
+
+"I see"--he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint in
+respect to himself. "She puts you on your guard."
+
+Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. "She puts me on my
+honour--or at least her father does."
+
+"As to her seeing _me_"
+
+"As to _my_ seeing at least--what may happen to her."
+
+"Because--you say--things _have_ happened?"
+
+His companion fairly sounded him. "You've only talked--when you've
+met--of 'art'?"
+
+"Well," he smiled, "'art is long'!"
+
+"Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord
+Theign is presently due--"
+
+"_Here_, back already from abroad?"--he was all alert.
+
+"He has not yet gone--he comes up this morning to start."
+
+"And stops here on his way?"
+
+"To take the _train de luxe_ this afternoon to his annual Salsomaggiore.
+But with so little time to spare," she went on reassuringly, "that,
+to simplify--as he wired me an hour ago from Dedborough--he has given
+rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is particularly to wait for him."
+
+"And who may therefore arrive at any moment?"
+
+She looked at her bracelet watch. "Scarcely before noon. So you'll just
+have your chance--"
+
+"Thank the powers then!"--Hugh grasped at it. "I shall have it best if
+you'll be so good as to tell me first--well," he faltered, "what it is
+that, to my great disquiet, you've further alluded to; what it is that
+has occurred."
+
+Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
+pronounced. "Haven't you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
+father's extreme reprobation?"
+
+"Yes, so much as that--that she must have greatly annoyed him--I have
+been supposing. But isn't it by her having asked me to act for her? I
+mean about the Mantovano--which I _have_ done."
+
+Lady Sandgate wondered. "You've 'acted'?"
+
+"It's what I've come to tell her at last--and I'm all impatience."
+
+"I see, I see"--she had caught a clue. "He hated that--yes; but you
+haven't really made out," she put to him, "the _other_ effect of your
+hour at Dedborough?" She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
+his divination had failed, and she didn't trouble him to confess it.
+"Directly you had gone she 'turned down' Lord John. Declined, I mean,
+the offer of his hand in marriage."
+
+Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. "He proposed
+there--?"
+
+"He had spoken, that day, _before_--before your talk with Lord Theign,
+who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
+Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you _had_
+gone, for his answer--"
+
+"She wouldn't have him?" Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.
+
+But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. "She wouldn't look
+at him."
+
+He bethought himself. "But had she said she would?"
+
+"So her father indignantly considers."
+
+"That's the _ground_ of his indignation?"
+
+"He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
+crisis."
+
+Hugh Crimble turned this over--feeling apparently for something he
+didn't find. "I'm sorry to hear such things, but where's the connection
+with me?"
+
+"Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don't see any---!" In that case,
+Lady Sandgate's motion implied, she washed her hands of it.
+
+Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
+to guess a conundrum--which he gave up. "I really don't see any, Lady
+Sandgate. But," he a little inconsistently said, "I'm greatly obliged to
+you for telling me."
+
+"Don't mention it!--though I think it _is_ good of me," she smiled, "on
+so short an acquaintance." To which she added more gravely: "I leave you
+the situation--but I'm willing to let you know that I'm all on Grace's
+side."
+
+"So am I, _rather!_--please let me frankly say."
+
+He clearly refreshed, he even almost charmed her. "It's the very least
+you can say!--though I'm not sure whether you say it as the simplest
+or as the very subtlest of men. But in case you don't know as I do how
+little the particular candidate I've named----"
+
+"Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?" he broke in--all quick
+intelligence here at least. "No, I don't perhaps know as well as you
+do--but I think I know as well as I just yet require."
+
+"There you are then! And if you did prevent," his hostess maturely
+pursued, "what wouldn't have been--well, good or nice, I'm quite on your
+side too."
+
+Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at
+a meaning. "You're with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of
+effort or ingenuity--"
+
+"The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?"--she took his presumed sense
+faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her reply
+to it. "Well, will you keep the secret of everything I've said or say?"
+
+"To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!"
+
+"Then," she momentously returned, "I only want, too, to make Bender
+impossible. If you ask me," she pursued, "how I arrange that with my
+deep loyalty to Lord Theign----"
+
+"I don't ask you anything of the sort," he interrupted--"I wouldn't ask
+you for the world; and my own bright plan for achieving the _coup_ you
+mention------"
+
+"You'll have time, at the most," she said, consulting afresh her
+bracelet watch, "to explain to Lady Grace." She reached an electric
+bell, which she touched--facing then her visitor again with an abrupt
+and slightly embarrassed change of tone. "You do think _my_ great
+portrait splendid?"
+
+He had strayed far from it and all too languidly came back. "Your
+Lawrence there? As I said, magnificent."
+
+But the butler had come in, interrupting, straight from the lobby; of
+whom she made her request. "Let her ladyship know--Mr. Crimble."
+
+Gotch looked hard at Hugh and the crumpled hat--almost as if having an
+option. But he resigned himself to repeating, with a distinctness that
+scarce fell short of the invidious, "Mr. Crimble," and departed on his
+errand.
+
+Lady Sandgate's fair flush of diplomacy had meanwhile not faded.
+"Couldn't you, with your immense cleverness and power, get the
+Government to do something?"
+
+"About your picture?" Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment.
+"You too then want to sell?"
+
+Oh she righted herself. "Never to a private party!"
+
+"Mr. Bender's not after it?" he asked--though scarce lighting his
+reluctant interest with a forced smile.
+
+"Most intensely after it. But never," cried the proprietress, "to a
+bloated alien!"
+
+"Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not," he asked, "carrying
+that magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as
+the object itself?"
+
+"Give it you for nothing?" She threw up shocked hands. "Because I'm an
+aged female pauper and can't make _every_ sacrifice."
+
+Hugh pretended--none too convincingly--to think. "Will you let them have
+it very cheap?"
+
+"Yes--for less than such a bribe as Bender's."
+
+"Ah," he said expressively, "that might be, and still----!"
+
+"Well," she had a flare of fond confidence. "I'll find out what he'll
+offer--if you'll on your side do what you can--and then ask them a third
+less." And she followed it up--as if suddenly conceiving him a prig.
+"See here, Mr. Crimble, I've been--and this very first time I--charming
+to you."
+
+"You have indeed," he returned; "but you throw back on it a lurid light
+if it has all been for _that!_"
+
+"It has been--well, to keep things as I want them; and if I've given you
+precious information mightn't you on your side--"
+
+"Estimate its value in cash?"--Hugh sharply took her up. "Ah, Lady
+Sandgate, I _am_ in your debt, but if you really bargain for your
+precious information I'd rather we assume that I haven't enjoyed it."
+
+She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady
+Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the
+nearer door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. "I
+won't bargain with the Treasury!"--she had passed out by the time Lady
+Grace arrived.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+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 Pappen-dick, 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 incoming 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'?"
+
+"Can't I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?"--he had his answer
+ready. "You've sought asylum with this good friend from the effects of
+your father's resentment."
+
+"'Sought asylum' is perhaps excessive," Lady Grace returned--"though
+it wasn't pleasant with him after that hour, no," she allowed. "And I
+couldn't go, you see, to Kitty."
+
+"No indeed, you couldn't go to Kitty." He smiled at her hard as he
+added: "I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is
+it that I've set you adrift--that I've darkened and poisoned your days.
+You're paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so
+gallantly in my grand remonstrance."
+
+She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again--as if
+accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of
+her state. "Why do you talk of it as 'paying'--if it's all to come back
+to my _being_ paid? I mean by your blest success--if you really do what
+you want."
+
+"I have your word for it," he searchingly said, "that our really pulling
+it off together will make up to you----?"
+
+"I should be ashamed if it didn't, for everything!"--she took the
+question from his mouth. "I believe in such a cause exactly as you
+do--and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your
+faith."
+
+"Then you'll help me no end," he said all simply and sincerely.
+
+"You've helped _me_ already"--that she gave him straight back. And on it
+they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.
+
+"You're very wonderful--for a girl!" Hugh brought out.
+
+"One _has_ to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one's house,"
+she laughed; "and that's all I am of ours--but a true and a right and a
+straight one."
+
+He glowed with his admiration. "You're splendid!"
+
+That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any
+rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. "I see our situation."
+
+"So do I, Lady Grace!" he cried with the strongest emphasis. "And your
+father only doesn't."
+
+"Yes," she said for intelligent correction--"he sees it, there's nothing
+in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong."
+
+Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that
+he wouldn't have seized. "He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other
+day he took as a rude protest. And any protest----"
+
+"Any protest," she quickly and fully agreed, "he takes as an offence,
+yes. It's his theory that he still has rights," she smiled, "though he
+_is_ a miserable peer."
+
+"How should he not have rights," said Hugh, "when he has really
+everything on earth?"
+
+"Ah, he doesn't even _know_ that--he takes it so much for granted." And
+she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. "He
+lives all in his own world."
+
+"He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours--quite
+as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube." With which
+Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. "And he must be
+here to do business to-day."
+
+"You know," Lady Grace asked, "that he's to meet Mr. Bender?"
+
+"Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and," her companion saw as he glanced
+at the clock on the chimney, "I've only ten minutes, at best. The
+'Journal' won't have been good for him," he added--"you doubtless have
+seen the 'Journal'?"
+
+"No"--she was vague. "We live by the 'Morning Post.'"
+
+"That's why our friend here didn't speak then," Hugh said with a better
+light--"which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn't do, either.
+But they've a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi,
+and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty--if we don't do
+something energetic--of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering
+horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge
+cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the
+rumour current--as too horrific to believe--of Lord Theign's putting up
+his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such
+sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and
+momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent
+authorities."
+
+"Of whom," said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, "you're of
+course seen as not the least."
+
+"Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I'm as yet--however I'm 'seen'--the
+whole collection. But we've time"--he rested on that "The fat, if you'll
+allow me the expression, is on the fire--which, as I see the matter, is
+where this particular fat _should_ be."
+
+"Is the article, then," his companion appealed, "very severe?"
+
+"I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent--and the
+great thing is that it immensely 'marks,' as they say. It will have made
+a big public difference--from this day; though it's of course aimed not
+so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow
+to tackle."
+
+"Exactly"--she was full of the saving vision; "but as the conditions are
+directly embodied in persons----"
+
+"Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it
+bells three or four."
+
+"Yes," she richly brooded--"Lady Lappington _is_ a cat!"
+
+"She will have been 'belled,' at any rate, with your father," Hugh
+amusedly went on, "to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good
+for us--I mean for _us_ in particular." Yet he had to bethink himself.
+"The case depends a good deal of course on how your father _takes_ such
+a resounding rap."
+
+"Oh, I know how he'll take it!"--her perception went all the way.
+
+"In the very highest and properest spirit?"
+
+"Well, you'll see." She was as brave as she was clear. "Or at least I
+shall!"
+
+Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. "You _are_, yes,
+splendid!"
+
+"I even," she laughed, "surprise myself."
+
+But he was already back at his calculations. "How early do the papers
+get to you?"
+
+"At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast--which isn't, however, very
+early."
+
+"Then that's what has caused his wire to Bender."
+
+"But how will such talk strike _him_?" the girl asked.
+
+Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought,
+he had let it lead him to certainty. "It will have moved Mr. Bender to
+absolute rapture."
+
+"Rather," Lady Grace wondered, "than have put him off?"
+
+"It will have put him prodigiously _on!_ Mr. Bender--as he said to me
+at Dedborough of his noble host there," Hugh pursued--"is 'a very nice
+man'; but he's a product of the world of advertisment, and advertisement
+is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish
+in water."
+
+She took it from him as half doubting. "But mayn't advertisement, in so
+special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?"
+
+Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught
+from foreign comrades. "He rides the biggest whirlwind--he has got it
+saddled and bitted."
+
+She faced the image, but cast about "Then where does our success come
+in?"
+
+"In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him."
+And Hugh further pointed the moral. "If in such proceedings all he
+knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it's only a
+question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself,
+you see, he'll have too much for every one else--so that we shall 'up'
+in a body and slay him."
+
+The girl's eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. "But if
+he has meanwhile got the picture?"
+
+"We'll slay him before he gets it!" He revelled in the breadth of his
+view. "Our own policy must be to _organise_ to that end the inevitable
+outcry. Organise Bender himself--organise him to scandal." Hugh had
+already even pity to spare for their victim. "He won't know it from a
+boom."
+
+Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. "But that
+will be only if he wants and decides for the picture."
+
+"We must make him then want and decide for it--decide, that is, for
+'ours.' To save it we must work him up--he'll in that case want it so
+indecently much. Then _we_ shall have to want it more!"
+
+"Well," she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, "you can take a
+horse to water----!"
+
+"Oh, trust me to make him drink!"
+
+There appeared a note in this that convinced her. "It's you, Mr.
+Crimble, who are 'splendid'!"
+
+"Well, I shall be--with my jolly wire!" And all on that scent again,
+"May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick's news?" he asked.
+
+"Why, rather, of course, come back!"
+
+"Only not," he debated, "till your father has left."
+
+Lady Grace considered too, but sharply decided. "Come when you _have_
+it. But tell me first," she added, "one thing." She hung fire a little
+while he waited, but she brought it out. "Was it you who got the
+'Journal' to speak?"
+
+"Ah, one scarcely 'gets' the 'Journal'!"
+
+"Who then gave them their 'tip'?"
+
+"About the Mantovano and its peril?" Well, he took a moment--but only
+not to say; in addition to which the butler had reappeared, entering
+from the lobby. "I'll tell you," he laughed, "when I come back!"
+
+Gotch had his manner of announcement while the visitor was mounting the
+stairs. "Mr. Breckenridge Bender!"
+
+"Ah then I go," said Lady Grace at once.
+
+"I'll stay three minutes." Hugh turned with her, alertly, to the easier
+issue, signalling hope and cheer from that threshold as he watched her
+disappear; after which he faced about with as brave a smile and as ready
+for immediate action as if she had there within kissed her hand to him.
+Mr. Bender emerged at the same instant, Gotch withdrawing and closing
+the door behind him; and the former personage, recognising his young
+friend, threw up his hands for friendly pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Ah, Mr. Crimble," he cordially inquired, "you've come with your great
+news?"
+
+Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment.
+"News of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven't news _yet_." But he
+added as with high candour for the visitor's motion of disappointment:
+"I think I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four
+weeks."
+
+"Well, in _my_ country," Mr. Bender returned with disgust, "it would
+take three or four minutes! Can't you make 'em step more lively?"
+
+"I'm expecting, sir," said Hugh good-humouredly, "a report from hour to
+hour."
+
+"Then will you let me have it right off?"
+
+Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: "Ah, it's scarcely
+for you, Mr. Bender, that I'm acting!"
+
+The great collector was but briefly checked. "Well, can't you just act
+for Art?"
+
+"Oh, you're doing that yourself so powerfully," Hugh laughed, "that I
+think I had best leave it to you!"
+
+His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a
+new improvement. "Don't you want to go round acting _with_ me?"
+
+"Go 'on tour,' as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender," Hugh said, "if I
+had any weight----!"
+
+"You'd add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that _you_
+should go back on me--after working me up so down there? The worst I've
+done," Mr. Bender continued, "is to refuse that Moretto."
+
+"Has it deplorably been _offered_ you?" our young man cried,
+unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his
+fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving
+the owner of the great work away: "Then why are you--as if you were a
+banished Romeo--so keen for news from Verona?" To this odd mixture of
+business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself
+with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of
+tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: "Aren't you here,
+sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?"
+
+"I'm here," he then imperturbably said, "because Lord Theign has wired
+me to meet him. Ain't you here for that yourself?"
+
+Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a "big" choice of answers.
+"Dear, no! I've but been in, by Lady Sandgate's leave, to see that grand
+Lawrence."
+
+"Ah yes, she's very kind about it--one does go 'in.'" After which Mr.
+Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity.
+"Is any one _after_ that grand Lawrence?"
+
+"Oh, I hope not," Hugh laughed, "unless you again dreadfully are:
+wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there."
+
+"You call it," Mr. Bender impartially inquired, "a _very_ wonderful
+thing?"
+
+"Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over"--Hugh spoke as for
+the strictly aesthetic awkwardness of that. "But you know I take my
+pictures hard." He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this
+connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. "I must make my
+little _rapport_." Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain. "We're
+a band of young men who care--and we watch the great things. Also--for I
+must give you the real truth about myself--we watch the great people."
+
+"Well, I guess I'm used to being watched--if that's the worst you can
+do." To which Mr. Bender added in his homely way: "But you know, Mr.
+Crimble, what I'm _really_ after."
+
+Hugh's strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. "The man in
+this morning's 'Journal' appears at least to have discovered."
+
+"Yes, the man in this morning's 'Journal' has discovered three or four
+weeks--as it appears to take you here for everything--after my beginning
+to talk. Why, they knew I was talking _that_ time ago on the other
+side."
+
+"Oh, they know things in the States," Hugh cheerfully agreed, "so
+independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud."
+
+"Well, I haven't so much talked as raved," Mr. Bender conceded--"for I'm
+afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me
+at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the
+echo."
+
+"Then they'll make up for lost time! But have you done it," Hugh asked,
+"to prepare an alibi?"
+
+"An alibi?"
+
+"By 'raving,' as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don't think
+you at all believe you'll get the Sir Joshua--but meanwhile we shall
+have cleared up the question of the Moretto."
+
+Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn't speak till he had done justice to this
+picture of his subtlety. "Then, why on earth do you want to boom the
+Moretto?"
+
+"You ask that," said Hugh, "because it's the boomed thing that's most in
+peril."
+
+"Well, it's the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag
+their value to the light why shouldn't we want to grab them and carry
+them off--the same as all of _you_ originally did?"
+
+"Ah, not quite the same," Hugh smiled--"that I _will_ say for you!"
+
+"Yes, you stick it on now--you _have_ got an eye for the rise in values.
+But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad
+that, to such a time, I'll pay it you."
+
+Our young man kept, during a moment's thought, his eyes on his
+companion, and then resumed with all intensity and candour: "You may
+easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me--as you appear too much for far
+greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on
+_this_, as to any case in which that happens--that when precious things,
+things we are to lose here, _are_ knocked down to you, you'll let us at
+least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before
+they're borne off?"
+
+Mr. Bender's big face fell almost with a crash. "Hand them over, you
+mean, to the sandwich men on Bond Street?"
+
+"To one or other of the placard and poster men--I don't insist on the
+inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be
+on view for three or four weeks."
+
+"You ask me," Mr. Bender returned, "for a _general_ assurance to that
+effect?"
+
+"Well, a particular one--so it be particular enough," Hugh said--"will
+do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue--well, of the value
+that's actually in the scales."
+
+"The Mantovano-Moretto?"
+
+"The Moretto-Mantovano!"
+
+Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. "Hadn't we better know which it is
+first?"
+
+Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. "The public
+interest--playing so straight on the question--may help to settle it.
+By which I mean that it will profit enormously--the question of
+probability, of identity itself will--by the discussion it will create.
+The discussion will promote certainty----"
+
+"And certainty," Mr. Bender massively mused, "will kick up a row."
+
+"_Of course_ it will kick up a row!"--Hugh thoroughly guaranteed that.
+"You'll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England--if you
+venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign."
+
+"Whom it won't be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing
+down."
+
+"But whom it will be exceedingly _mine_ to practise on"--and Hugh
+laughed as at the fun before them--"if I may entertain the sweet hope
+of success. The only thing is--from my point of view," he went on--"that
+backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn't in the least
+in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should be really
+too much of it for his taste or his nerves he'll set his handsome face
+as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what I appeal to
+you for will have taken place--the picture will have been seen by a lot
+of people who'll care."
+
+"It will have been seen," Mr. Bender amended--"on the mere contingency
+of my acquisition of it--only if its present owner consents."
+
+"'Consents'?" Hugh almost derisively echoed; "why, he'll propose it
+himself, he'll insist on it, he'll put it through, once he's angry
+enough--as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal
+act of his will be sure to make him; and I'm afraid the striking
+criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown
+on his flame of bravado."
+
+Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion.
+"Yes, I guess he's pretty mad."
+
+"They've imputed to him"--Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense--"an
+intention of which after all he isn't guilty."
+
+"So that"--his listener glowed with interested optimism--"if they don't
+look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he'll just go and be
+guilty!"
+
+Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly
+elated by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped.
+"You entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh
+fisher in troubled waters?" And then with a finer art, as his companion,
+expansively bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound
+_him_: "The strongest thing in such a type--one does make out--is his
+resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is
+quite that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the
+groaning board of his banquet of life to _be_ such a liberty."
+
+Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed
+aristocratic illusion. "Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes,
+the way those of you who have got things fixed for them _do_, over here;
+and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark--"
+
+But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced
+to the mere synthetic interjection "My!"
+
+"That's it, Mr. Bender," Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral;
+"he won't quit it without a hard struggle."
+
+Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high
+calculation of impunity. "Well, I guess he won't struggle too hard for
+me to hold on to him if I _want_ to!"
+
+"In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be," Hugh returned,
+"don't forget what I've urged on you--the claim of our desolate
+country."
+
+But his friend had an answer to this. "My natural interest, Mr.
+Crimble--considering what I do for it--is in the claim of ours. But I
+wish you were on my side!"
+
+"Not so much," Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, "as I wish you were
+on mine!" Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. "Good-bye--for another
+look here!"
+
+He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his
+companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. "How much is
+she really worth?"
+
+"'She'?" Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. "Lady Sandgate?"
+
+"Her great-grandmother."
+
+A responsible answer was prevented--the butler was again with them; he
+had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage
+under his convoy. "Lord John!"
+
+Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape.
+"Oh, ask _that_ friend!" With which he sought the further passage to the
+staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch,
+who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that
+her ladyship would come, left them together.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Then Theign's not yet here!" Lord John had to resign himself as he
+greeted his American ally. "But he told me I should find you."
+
+"He has kept me waiting," that gentleman returned--"but what's the
+matter with him anyway?"
+
+"The matter with him"--Lord John treated such ignorance as
+irritating--"must of course be this beastly thing in the 'Journal.'"
+
+Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such
+connections. "What's the matter with the beastly thing?"
+
+"Why, aren't you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at
+you?"
+
+"If you call _that_ a regular dig you can't have had much experience of
+the Papers. I've known them to dig much deeper."
+
+"I've had _no_ experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do
+you mean to say," asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy,
+"that you don't unpleasantly feel it?"
+
+"Feel it where, my dear sir?"
+
+"Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!"
+
+"All over me at once?"--Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. "Well,
+I'm a large man--so when I want to feel so much I look out for something
+good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine--ain't that
+what you wear?--does our friend propose to do about it?"
+
+Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the
+apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before
+them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once
+referred the question. "What _will_ Theign propose, do you think, Lady
+Sandgate, to do about it?"
+
+She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. "To 'do'----?"
+
+"Don't you know about the thing in the 'Journal'--awfully offensive all
+round?"
+
+"There'd be even a little pinch for _you_ in it," Mr. Bender said to
+her--"if you were bent on fitting the shoe!"
+
+Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her
+elder guest while she took her place with them. "Oh, the shoes of such
+monsters as that are much too big for poor _me!_" But she was more
+specific for Lord John. "I know only what Grace has just told me; but
+since it's a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly--what you
+may call--take his stand!"
+
+Lord John welcomed this assurance. "If I know him he'll take it
+splendidly!"
+
+Mr. Bender's attention was genial, though rather more detached. "And
+what--while he's about it--will he take it particularly _on?_"
+
+"Oh, we've plenty of things, thank heaven," said Lady Sandgate, "for a
+man in Theign's position to hold fast by!"
+
+Lord John freely confirmed it. "Scores and scores--rather! And I will
+say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may
+soon become a real convenience."
+
+Mr. Bender seemed struck--and not unsympathetic. "I see that your system
+would be rather a fraud if you hadn't pretty well fixed _that!_"
+
+Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned
+and convinced. "It doesn't, however, alter the fact that we've thus in
+our ears the first growl of an outcry."
+
+"Ah," Lord John concurred, "we've unmistakably the first growl of an
+outcry!"
+
+Mr. Bender's judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign,
+introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the
+result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself.
+"Why, they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl
+of an outcry!"
+
+The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been
+held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least
+that a certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his
+lordship's aspect would have been explained by his having taken the
+full measure--an inner success with which he glowed--of some high
+provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house;
+he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his
+journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole
+effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and
+every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly
+unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy
+pitch that he replied to the prime upsetter of his peace.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what anything means to _you_, Mr. Bender--but
+it's exactly to find out that I've asked you, with our friend John,
+kindly to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your
+good leave," he went on to Lady Sandgate; "at which I'm only too pleased
+that you yourself should assist. The 'first growl' of any outcry, I may
+mention to you all, affects me no more than the last will----!"
+
+"So I'm delighted to gather"--Lady Sandgate took him straight up--"that
+you don't let go your inestimable Cure."
+
+He at first quite stared superior--"'Let go'?"--but then treated it with
+a lighter touch. "Upon my honour I might, you know--that dose of the
+daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate," he pursued
+to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, "I arrive with my
+decision taken--which I've thought may perhaps interest you. If that
+tuppeny rot _is_ an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud."
+
+Lord John rejoicingly approved. "Absolutely the only way--with the least
+self-respect--to treat it!"
+
+Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. "But are you
+sure it's so easy, Theign, to hush up a _real_ noise?"
+
+"It ain't what I'd call a real one, Lady Sandgate," Mr. Bender said;
+"you can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two
+or three mice! But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will
+interest me to hear what sort of a trap--by what you say--you propose to
+set for them."
+
+"You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender," his lordship
+replied, "the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my
+absolutely personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin
+of any definite report of which--in such circles!--I'm afraid I rather
+wonder if you yourself can't give me a clue."
+
+It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. "You
+rather wonder if I've talked of how I feel about your detaining in your
+hands my Beautiful Duchess----?"
+
+"Oh, if you've already published her as 'yours'--with your _power_
+of publication!" Lord Theign coldly laughed,--"of course I trace the
+connection!"
+
+Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of
+a pang. "Why, I haven't for quite a while talked of a blessed other
+thing--and I'm capable of growing more profane over my _not_ getting her
+than I guess any one would dare to be if I did."
+
+"Well, you'll certainly not 'get' her, Mr. Bender," Lady Sandgate, as
+for reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; "and even if there were a
+chance of it don't you see that your way wouldn't be publicly to abuse
+our noble friend?"
+
+Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. "Oh, I guess
+our noble friend knows I _have_ to talk big about big things. You
+understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!"
+
+"I'll forgive you," Lord Theign civilly returned, "all the big talk
+you like if you'll now understand _me_. My retort to that hireling pack
+shall be at once to dispose of a picture."
+
+Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. "But that's what you wanted to do
+before."
+
+"Pardon me," said his lordship--"I make a difference. It's what you
+wanted me to do."
+
+The mystification, however, continued. "And you were _not_--as you
+seemed then--willing?"
+
+Lord Theign waived cross-questions. "Well, I'm willing _now_--that's all
+that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time," he added
+with all authority, "you can't have our Duchess!"
+
+"You can't have our Duchess!"--and Lord John, as before the altar of
+patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.
+
+"You can't have our Duchess!" Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace
+that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet
+sociability as she added: "I wish he'd tell you too, you dreadful rich
+thing, that you can't have anything at all!"
+
+Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that
+rigour. "Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?"
+
+"And what--as it _is_," Mr. Bender asked--"becomes of my unhappy
+grievance?"
+
+"Wouldn't a really great capture make up to you for that?"
+
+"Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have--and it
+depends, don't you see, on how you measure the size."
+
+Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. "Shouldn't you
+like to go back there and take the measure yourself?"
+
+Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. "Look again at
+that tottering Moretto?"
+
+"Well, its size--as you say--isn't in _any_ light a negligible
+quantity."
+
+"You mean that--big as it is--it hasn't yet stopped growing?"
+
+The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord
+Theign himself meant "It's more to the purpose," he said to Mr. Bender,
+"that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words
+the very essence, of my plan of campaign--which is to put the picture at
+once on view." He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. "On
+view as a thing definitely disposed of."
+
+"I say, I say, I say!" cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to
+high admiration.
+
+Lady Sandgate's approval was more qualified. "But on view, dear Theign,
+how?"
+
+"With one of those pushing people in Bond Street." And then as for the
+crushing climax of his policy: "As a Mantovano pure and simple."
+
+"But my dear man," she quavered, "if it _isn't_ one?"
+
+Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him
+and he let out sail. "Lady Sand-gate, it's going, by all that's--well,
+interesting, to _be_ one!"
+
+Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. "You seize me? We _treat_ it as
+one!"
+
+Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. "We _treat_ it as one!"
+
+Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought--he even
+gave it back larger. "As the long-lost Number Eight!"
+
+Lord Theign happily seized _him_. "That will be it--to a charm!"
+
+"It will make them," Mr. Bender asked, "madder than anything?"
+
+His patron--if not his client--put it more nobly. "It will markedly
+affirm my attitude."
+
+"Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion."
+
+"It may create all it will!"
+
+"Well, if _you_ don't mind it, _I_ don't!" Mr. Bender concluded. But
+though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid application
+of it elsewhere. "You'll put the thing on view right off?"
+
+"As soon as the proper arrangement----"
+
+"You put off your journey to _make_ it?" Lady Sand-gate at once broke in.
+
+Lord Theign bethought himself--with the effect of a gracious confidence
+in the others. "Not if these friends will act."
+
+"Oh, I guess we'll _act!_" Mr. Bender declared.
+
+"Ah, _won't_ we though!" Lord John re-echoed.
+
+"You understand then I have an interest?" Mr. Bender went on to Lord
+Theign.
+
+His lordship's irony met it. "I accept that complication--which so much
+simplifies!"
+
+"And yet also have a liberty?"
+
+"Where else would be those you've taken? The point is," said Lord
+Theign, "that _I_ have a show."
+
+It settled Mr. Bender. "Then I'll _fix_ your show." He snatched up his
+hat. "Lord John, come right round!"
+
+Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the
+whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking
+leave of the others he gave it even his applause. "The fellow can do
+anything anywhere!" And he hastily followed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their
+companion's enthusiasm. "That may be true of Mr. Bender--for it's
+dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror."
+
+"Well," said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the
+question, "I dare say a terror will help me." He had other business to
+which he at once gave himself. "And now, if you please, for that girl."
+
+"I'll send her to you," she replied, "if you can't stay to luncheon."
+
+"I've three or four things to do," he pleaded, "and I lunch with Kitty
+at one."
+
+She submitted in that case--but disappointedly. "With Berkeley
+Square then you've time. But I confess I don't quite grasp the so odd
+inspiration that you've set those men to carry out."
+
+He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. "Then it
+needn't trouble you, dear--it's enough that I myself go straight."
+
+"Are you so very convinced it's straight?"--she wouldn't be a bore to
+him, but she couldn't not be a blessing.
+
+"What in the world else is it," he asked, "when, having good reasons,
+one acts on 'em?"
+
+"You must have an immense array," she sighed, "to fly so in the face of
+Opinion!"
+
+"'Opinion'?" he commented--"I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing,
+as I'm taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my
+umbrella and send it about its business." To which he added with more
+reproach: "It's enough to have been dished by Grace--without _your_
+falling away!"
+
+Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. "It's only my great
+affection--and all that these years have been for us: _they_ it is that
+make me wish you weren't so proud."
+
+"I've a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us--a
+very charming matter. But 'proud' is it you find me of the daughter who
+does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?"
+
+Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point
+of this. "Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair--but are you sure
+you can really bear to see Grace?"
+
+"I seem expected indeed to bear much," he said with more and more of his
+parental bitterness, "but I don't know that I'm yet in a funk before
+my child. Doesn't she _want_ to see me, with any contrition, after the
+trick she has played me?" And then as his companion's answer failed: "In
+spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no
+sign of her explaining--?"
+
+His hostess raised her head. "She does want to see you, I know; but you
+must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough--when it was you
+who declined to see _her_."
+
+"Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?"--he
+was entirely reminiscent. "What I recall is that even if I had
+condoned--that evening--her deception of _me_ in my folly, I still
+loathed, for my friend's sake, her practical joke on poor John."
+
+Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. "It was your very
+complaint that your own appeal to her _became_ an appeal from herself."
+
+"Yes," he returned, so well he remembered, "she was about as civil to
+me then--picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!--as that
+devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant remarks,
+for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!"
+
+His good friend showily balanced and might have been about to reply with
+weight; but what she in fact brought out was only: "I see you're right
+about it: I must let her speak for herself."
+
+"That I shall greatly prefer to her speaking--as she did so
+extraordinarily, out of the blue, at Dedborough, upon my honour--for the
+wonderful friends she picks up: the picture-man introduced by her (what
+was his name?) who regularly 'cheeked' me, as I suppose he'd call it,
+in my own house, and whom I hope, by the way, that under this roof she's
+not able to be quite so thick with!"
+
+If Lady Sandgate winced at that vain dream she managed not to betray
+it, and she had, in any embarrassment on this matter, the support, as we
+know, of her own tried policy. "She leads her life under this roof
+very much as under yours; and she's not of an age, remember, for me
+to pretend either to watch her movements or to control her contacts."
+Leaving him however thus to perform his pleasure the charming woman had
+before she went an abrupt change of tone. "Whatever your relations with
+others, dear friend, don't forget that _I'm_ still here."
+
+Lord Theign accepted the reminder, though, the circumstances being such,
+it scarce moved him to ecstasy. "That you're here, thank heaven, is of
+course a comfort--or would be if you understood."
+
+"Ah," she submissively sighed, "if I don't always 'understand' a spirit
+so much higher than mine and a situation so much more complicated,
+certainly, I at least always defer, I at least always--well, what can I
+say but worship?" And then as he remained not other than finely passive,
+"The old altar, Theign," she went on--"and a spark of the old fire!"
+
+He had not looked at her on this--it was as if he shrank, with his
+preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left
+hand. "So I feel!" he was, however, kind enough to answer.
+
+"Do feel!" she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand
+to her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich "Good-bye!" reached the
+threshold of the other room.
+
+"May I smoke?" he asked before she had disappeared.
+
+"Dear, yes!"
+
+He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about
+for a match. But something else occurred to him. "You must come to
+Victoria."
+
+"Rather!" she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Left alone he had a moment's meditation where he stood; it found issue
+in an articulate "Poor dear thing!"--an exclamation marked at once with
+patience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which,
+waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed,
+finding matches at last and lighting his cigarette--all with an air
+of concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his
+finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom--if gloom it was--dropped,
+however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene
+through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in
+silence.
+
+"Oh!" he jerked out at sight of her--which she had to content herself
+with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing
+little to qualify its dryness. "I take it for granted that you know
+I'm within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of
+health." And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her
+possession of this fact: "I've thought accordingly that before I go I
+should--on this first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at
+Dedborough--like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my
+absence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me."
+He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness,
+to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly
+passive--possibly indeed a trifle portentous. "If you had plotted and
+planned it in advance," he none the less firmly pursued, "if you had
+acted from some uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn't have arranged
+more perfectly to incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and
+purposes, make light of me and insult me." Even before this charge
+she made no sign; with her eyes now attached to the ground she let him
+proceed. "I had practically guaranteed to our excellent, our charming
+friend, your favourable view of his appeal--which you yourself too,
+remember, had left him in so little doubt of!--so that, having by your
+performance so egregiously failed him, I have the pleasure of their
+coming down on me for explanations, for compensations, and for God knows
+what besides."
+
+Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of
+her attention. "I'm sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong;
+but may I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as 'they'?"
+
+"'They'?" he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to
+his more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he
+has tried to pass. "Why, your own sister to begin with--whose interest
+in what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise;
+and _his_ people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular,
+who only wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, and
+as pleasant and as clever, damn it, when all's said and done, as any
+others that are likely to come your way." It clearly did his lordship
+good to work out thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to
+him and glowed with irresistible colour. "Letting alone gallant John
+himself, most amiable of men, about whose merits and whose claims you
+appear to have pretended to agree with me just that you might, when he
+presumed, poor chap, ardently to urge them, deal him with the more cruel
+effect that calculated blow on the mouth!"
+
+It was clear that in the girl's great gravity embarrassment had no
+share. "They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you're
+obliged to come down on _me?_"
+
+"Assuredly--for some better satisfaction than your just moping here
+without a sign!"
+
+"But a sign of what, father?" she asked--as helpless as a lone islander
+scanning the horizon for a sail.
+
+"Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, the
+predicament into which you've put me!"
+
+"Hasn't it occurred to you in the least that you've rather put _me_ into
+one?"
+
+He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. "I put you certainly
+in the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlement
+in life--which all the elements that would make for your enjoying it
+had every appearance of successfully commending to you." The perfect
+readiness of which on his lips had, like a higher wave, the virtue
+of lifting and dropping him to still more tangible ground. "And if I
+understand you aright as wishing to know whether I apologise for that
+zeal, why you take a most preposterous view of our relation as father
+and daughter."
+
+"You understand me no better than I fear I understand you," Lady Grace
+returned, "if what you expect of me is really to take back my words to
+Lord John." And then as he didn't answer, while their breach gaped like
+a jostled wound, "Have you seriously come to propose--and from _him_
+again," she added--"that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lend
+myself to your beautiful arrangement?"
+
+It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for his
+dignity, not give way to passion. "I've come, above all, for _this_, I
+may say, Grace: to remind you of whom you're addressing when you jibe at
+me, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand--exactly as to whether
+you judged us to have actively _incurred_ your treatment of our unhappy
+friend, to have brought it upon us, he and I, by my refusal to discuss
+with you at such a crisis the question of my disposition of a particular
+item of my property. I've only to look at you, for that matter," Lord
+Theign continued--always with a finer point and a higher consistency as
+his rehearsal of his wrongs broadened--"to have my inquiry, as it seems
+to me, eloquently answered. You flounced away from poor John, you took,
+as he tells me, 'his head off,' just to repay me for what you chose to
+regard as my snub on the score of your challenging my entertainment of
+a possible purchaser; a rebuke launched at me, practically, in the
+presence of a most inferior person, a stranger and an intruder, from
+whom you had all the air of taking your cue for naming me the great
+condition on which you'd gratify my hope. Am I to understand, in other
+words,"--and his lordship mounted to a climax--"that you sent us
+about our business because I failed to gratify _your_ hope: that of my
+knocking under to your sudden monstrous pretension to lay down the law
+for my choice of ways and means of raising, to my best convenience, a
+considerable sum of money? You'll be so good as to understand, once
+for all, that I recognise there no right of interference from any
+quarter--and also to let that knowledge govern your behaviour in my
+absence."
+
+Lady Grace had thus for some minutes waited on his words--waited even as
+almost with anxiety for the safe conduct he might look to from some of
+the more extravagant of them. But he at least felt at the end--if it
+was an end--all he owed them; so that there was nothing for her but to
+accept as achieved his dreadful felicity. "You're very angry with
+me, and I hope you won't feel me simply 'aggravating' if I say that,
+thinking everything over, I've done my best to allow for that. But I
+_can_ answer your question if I do answer it by saying that my discovery
+of your possible sacrifice of one of our most beautiful things didn't
+predispose me to decide in favour of a person--however 'backed' by
+you--for whose benefit the sacrifice was to take place. Frankly," the
+girl pushed on, "I did quite hate, for the moment, everything that might
+make for such a mistake; and took the darkest view, let me also confess,
+of every one, without exception, connected with it I interceded with
+you, earnestly, for our precious picture, and you wouldn't on any terms
+_have_ my intercession. On top of that Lord John blundered in, without
+timeliness or tact--and I'm afraid that, as I hadn't been the least in
+love with him even before, he did have to take the consequence."
+
+Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as all
+he could possibly want. "You recognise then that your reception of him
+_was_ purely vindictive!--the meaning of which is that unless my conduct
+of my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens to
+square with your superior wisdom you'll put me under boycott all round!
+While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charming
+friend's lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand an
+example, what account have you to offer of the scene you made me
+there before that fellow--your confederate, as he had all the air of
+being!--by giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminently
+done with him after his remarkable display, you at least were but the
+more determined to see him keep it up?"
+
+The girl's justification, clearly, was very present to her, and not
+less obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding every
+side-issue, keep it very simple, "The only account I can give you, I
+think, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that I
+felt--well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,
+I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn't do such
+things. I care, if you like, to indiscretion--I care, if you like, to
+offence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you before
+you leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I'm ready to cry out
+to you that you oughtn't, you oughtn't, you oughtn't!"
+
+Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,
+checked her as in an act really of violence--save that, like an inflamed
+young priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her message.
+"Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter--no 'crying out,' if you
+please!" After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still kept her
+lighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a minute,
+inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections, taking,
+as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new strange
+measure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a difference
+of tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had supposed,
+so that the case might really call for some coolness. "You keep bad
+company, Grace--it pays the devil with your sense of proportion. If you
+make this row when I sell a picture, what will be left to you when I
+forge a cheque?"
+
+"If you had arrived at the necessity of forging a cheque," she answered,
+"I should then resign myself to that of your selling a picture."
+
+"But not short of that!"
+
+"Not short of that. Not one of ours."
+
+"But I couldn't," said his lordship with his best and coldest amusement,
+"sell one of somebody else's!"
+
+She was, however, not disconcerted. "Other people do other things--they
+appear to have done them, and to be doing them, all about us. But _we_
+have been so decently different--always and ever. We've never done
+anything disloyal."
+
+"'Disloyal'?"--he was more largely amazed and even interested now.
+
+Lady Grace stuck to her word. "That's what it seems to _me!_"
+
+"It seems to you"--and his sarcasm here was easy--"more disloyal to sell
+a picture than to buy one? Because we didn't paint 'em all ourselves,
+you know!"
+
+She threw up impatient hands. "I don't ask you either to paint or to
+buy----!"
+
+"Oh, _that's_ a mercy!" he interrupted, riding his irony hard; "and
+I'm glad to hear you at least let me off _such_ efforts! However, if it
+strikes you as gracefully filial to apply to your father's conduct so
+invidious a word," he went on less scathingly, "you must take
+from him, in your turn, his quite other view of what makes
+disloyalty--understanding distinctly, by the same token, that he enjoins
+on you not to give an odious illustration of it, while he's away, by
+discussing and deploring with any _one_ of your extraordinary
+friends any aspect or feature whatever of his walk and conversation.
+That--pressed as I am for time," he went on with a glance at his watch
+while she remained silent--"is the main sense of what I have to say to
+you; so that I count on your perfect conformity. When you have told me
+that I _may_ so count"--and casting about for his hat he espied it and
+went to take it up--"I shall more cordially bid you good-bye."
+
+His daughter looked as if she had been for some time expecting the law
+thus imposed upon her--had been seeing where he must come out; but
+in spite of this preparation she made him wait for his reply in such
+tension as he had himself created. "To Kitty I've practically said
+nothing--and she herself can tell you why: I've in fact scarcely seen
+her this fortnight. Putting aside then Amy Sandgate, the only person to
+whom I've spoken--of your 'sacrifice,' as I suppose you'll let me
+call it?--is Mr. Hugh Crimble, whom you talk of as my 'confederate' at
+Dedborough."
+
+Lord Theign recovered the name with relief. "Mr. Hugh Crimble--that's
+it!--whom you so amazingly caused to be present, and apparently invited
+to be active, at a business that so little concerned him."
+
+"He certainly took upon himself to be interested, as I had hoped he
+would. But it was because I had taken upon _my_ self--"
+
+"To act, yes," Lord Theign broke in, "with the grossest want of
+delicacy! Well, it's from that exactly that you'll now forbear;
+and 'interested' as he may be--for which I'm deucedly obliged to
+him!--you'll not speak to Mr. Crimble again."
+
+"Never again?"--the girl put it as for full certitude.
+
+"Never of the question that I thus exclude. You may chatter your fill,"
+said his lordship curtly, "about any others."
+
+"Why, the particular question you forbid," Grace returned with great
+force, but as if saying something very reasonable--"that question is
+_the_ question we care about: it's our very ground of conversation."
+
+"Then," her father decreed, "your conversation will please to _dispense_
+with a ground; or you'll perhaps, better still--if that's the only
+way!--dispense with your conversation."
+
+Lady Grace took a moment as if to examine this more closely. "You
+require of me not to communicate with Mr. Crimble at all?"
+
+"Most assuredly I require it--since it's to that you insist on
+reducing me." He didn't look reduced, the master of Dedborough, as he
+spoke--which was doubtless precisely because he held his head so high
+to affirm what he suffered. "Is it so essential to your comfort," he
+demanded, "to hear him, or to make him, abuse me?"
+
+"'Abusing' you, father dear, has nothing whatever to do with it!"--his
+daughter had fairly lapsed, with a despairing gesture, to the tenderness
+involved in her compassion for his perversity. "We look at the thing in
+a much larger way," she pursued, not heeding that she drew from him
+a sound of scorn for her "larger." "It's of our Treasure itself we
+talk--and of what can be _done_ in such cases; though with a close
+application, I admit, to the case that you embody."
+
+"Ah," Lord Theign asked as with absurd curiosity, "I embody a case?"
+
+"Wonderfully, father--as you do everything; and it's the fact of its
+being exceptional," she explained, "that makes it so difficult to deal
+with."
+
+His lordship had a gape for it. "'To deal with'? You're undertaking to
+'deal' with me?"
+
+She smiled more frankly now, as for a rift in the gloom. "Well, how can
+we help it if you _will_ be a case?" And then as her tone but visibly
+darkened his wonder: "What we've set our hearts on is saving the
+picture."
+
+"What you've set your hearts on, in other words, is working straight
+against me?"
+
+But she persisted without heat. "What we've set our hearts on is working
+for England."
+
+"And pray who in the world's 'England,'" he cried in his stupefaction,
+"unless I am?"
+
+"Dear, dear father," she pleaded, "that's all we _want_ you to be! I
+mean"--she didn't fear firmly to force it home--"in the real, the right,
+the grand sense; the sense that, you see, is so intensely ours."
+
+"'Ours'?"--he couldn't but again throw back her word at her. "Isn't it,
+damn you, just _in_ ours--?"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted--"not in _ours!_" She smiled at him still,
+though it was strained, as if he really ought to perceive.
+
+But he glared as at a senseless juggle. "What and who the devil are you
+talking about? What are 'we,' the whole blest lot of us, pray, but
+the best and most English thing in the country: people walking--and
+riding!--straight; doing, disinterestedly, most of the difficult and all
+the thankless jobs; minding their own business, above all, and expecting
+others to mind theirs?" So he let her "have" the stout sound truth, as
+it were--and so the direct force of it clearly might, by his view, have
+made her reel. "You and I, my lady, and your two decent brothers, God be
+thanked for them, and mine into the bargain, and all the rest, the jolly
+lot of us, take us together--make us numerous enough without any foreign
+aid or mixture: if that's what I understand you to mean!"
+
+"You don't understand me at all--evidently; and above all I see you
+don't want to!" she had the bravery to add, "By 'our' sense of what's
+due to the nation in such a case I mean Mr. Crimble's and mine--and
+nobody's else at all; since, as I tell you, it's only with him I've
+talked."
+
+It gave him then, every inch of him showed, the full, the grotesque
+measure of the scandal he faced. "So that 'you and Mr. Crimble'
+represent the standard, for me, in your opinion, of the proprieties and
+duties of our house?"
+
+Well, she was too earnest--as she clearly wished to let him see--to mind
+his perversion of it. "I express to you the way we feel."
+
+"It's most striking to hear, certainly, what you express"--he
+had positively to laugh for it; "and you speak of him, with your
+insufferable 'we,' as if you were presenting him as your--God knows
+what! You've enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to have
+arrived at such unanimity." And then, as if to fall into no trap he
+might somehow be laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebutted
+nothing: "You must see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be able
+to speak of yourself without him!"
+
+"Yes, we're fellow-critics, father"--she accepted this opening. "I
+perfectly adopt your term." But it took her a minute to go further. "I
+saw Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago."
+
+"Saw him 'here'?" Lord Theign amazedly asked. "He _comes_ to you
+here--and Amy Sandgate has been silent?"
+
+"It wasn't her business to tell you--since, you see, she could leave it
+to me. And I quite expect," Lady Grace then produced, "that he'll come
+again."
+
+It brought down with a bang all her father's authority. "Then I simply
+exact of you that you don't see him."
+
+The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimming
+cup. "Is that what you _really_ meant by your condition just now--that
+when I do see him I shall not speak to him?"
+
+"What I 'really meant' is what I really mean--that you bow to the law I
+lay upon you and drop the man altogether."
+
+"Have nothing to do with him at all?"
+
+"Have nothing to do with him at all."
+
+"In fact"--she took it in--"give him wholly up."
+
+He had an impatient gesture. "You sound as if I asked you to give up
+a fortune!" And then, though she had phrased his idea without
+consternation--verily as if it had been in the balance for her--he
+might have been moved by something that gathered in her eyes. "You're
+so wrapped up in him that the precious sacrifice is like _that_ sort of
+thing?"
+
+Lady Grace took her time--but showed, as her eyes continued to hold him,
+what _had_ gathered. "I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father--I think
+him clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants--I want it, I think,
+really, as much; and I don't at all deny that he has helped to make me
+so want it. But that doesn't matter. I'll wholly cease to see him, I'll
+give him up forever, if--if--!" She faltered, however, she hung fire
+with a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she began
+and stopped again, "If--if--!" while her father caught her up with
+irritation.
+
+"'If,' my lady? If _what_, please?"
+
+"If you'll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender--and never
+make another to any one else!"
+
+He stood staring as at the size of it--then translated it into his own
+terms. "If I'll obligingly announce to the world that I've made an ass
+of myself you'll kindly forbear from your united effort--the charming
+pair of you--to show me up for one?"
+
+Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this,
+simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn't
+till a minute passed that she said: "You don't agree to my compromise?"
+
+Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of his
+spirit. "Good God, I'm to 'compromise' on top of everything?--I'm to
+let you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I'm
+entitled to settle with you as things have ever _been_ settled among us,
+by uttering to you my last parental word?"
+
+"You don't care enough then for what you name?"--she took it up as
+scarce heeding now what he said.
+
+"For putting an end to your odious commerce--? I give you the measure,
+on the contrary," said Lord Theign, "of how much I care: as you give me,
+very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you--!" But
+his other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which he
+broke off in turn as for disgust.
+
+It was with an effect of decently shielding herself--the unuttered
+meaning came so straight--that she substituted words of her own. "Of
+what it costs me to redeem the picture?"
+
+"To lose your tenth-rate friend"--he spoke without scruple now.
+
+She instantly broke into ardent deprecation, pleading at once and
+warning. "Father, father, oh--! You hold the thing in your hands."
+
+He pulled up before her again as to thrust the responsibility straight
+back. "My orders then are so much rubbish to you?"
+
+Lady Grace held her ground, and they remained face to face in opposition
+and accusation, neither making the other the sign of peace. But the girl
+at least _had_, in her way, held out the olive-branch, while Lord Theign
+had but reaffirmed his will. It was for her acceptance of this that he
+searched her, her last word not having yet come. Before it had done so,
+however, the door from the lobby opened and Mr. Gotch had regained
+their presence. This appeared to determine in Lady Grace a view of the
+importance of delay, which she signified to her companion in a "Well--I
+must think!" For the butler positively resounded, and Hugh was there.
+
+"Mr. Crimble!" Mr. Gotch proclaimed--with the further extravagance of
+projecting the visitor straight upon his lordship.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Our young man showed another face than the face his friend had lately
+seen him carry off, and he now turned it distressfully from that source
+of inspiration to Lord Theign, who was flagrantly, even from this first
+moment, no such source at all, and then from his noble adversary back
+again, under pressure of difficulty and effort, to Lady Grace, whom he
+directly addressed. "Here I am again, you see--and I've got my news,
+worse luck!" But his manner to her father was the next instant more
+brisk. "I learned you were here, my lord; but as the case is important I
+told them it was all right and came up. I've been to my club," he
+added for the girl, "and found the tiresome thing--!" But he broke down
+breathless.
+
+"And it isn't good?" she cried with the highest concern.
+
+Ruefully, yet not abjectly, he confessed, "Not so good as I hoped. For I
+assure you, my lord, I counted--"
+
+"It's the report from Pappendick about the picture at Verona," Lady
+Grace interruptingly explained.
+
+Hugh took it up, but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassment
+dismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showing
+thus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any reviving
+possibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. "The man
+I told _you_ about also," he said to his formidable patron; "whom I
+went to Brussels to talk with and who, most kindly, has gone for us to
+Verona. He has been able to get straight at _their_ Mantovano, but the
+brute horribly wires me that he doesn't quite see the thing; see, I
+mean"--and he gathered his two hearers together now in his overflow
+of chagrin, conscious, with his break of the ice, more exclusively of
+that--"my vivid vital point, the absolute screaming identity of the two
+persons represented. I still hold," he persuasively went on, "that
+our man is their man, but Pappendick decides that he isn't--and as
+Pappendick has so _much_ to be reckoned with of course I'm awfully
+abashed."
+
+Lord Theign had remained what he had begun by being, immeasurably and
+inaccessibly detached--only with his curiosity more moved than he
+could help and as, on second thought, to see what sort of a still more
+offensive fool the heated youth would really make of himself. "Yes--you
+seem indeed remarkably abashed!"
+
+Hugh clearly was thrown again, by the cold "cut" of this, colder than
+any mere social ignoring, upon a sense of the damnably poor figure he
+did offer; so that, while he straightened himself and kept a mastery of
+his manner and a control of his reply, we should yet have felt his cheek
+tingle. "I backed my own judgment strongly, I know--and I've got my
+snub. But I don't in the least knock under."
+
+"Only the first authority in Europe doesn't care, I suppose, whether you
+do or not!"
+
+"He isn't _the_ first authority in Europe, thank God," the young man
+returned--"though he is, I admit, one of the three or four first. And
+I mean to appeal--I've another shot in my locker," he went on with his
+rather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. "I had already written, you
+see, to dear old Bardi."
+
+"Bardi of Milan?"--she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the appeal
+of his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament was
+also for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken without
+her father's presence.
+
+It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any one
+to perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. "You know of
+him?--how delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel," he quickly
+explained, "he must have _most_ the instinct--and it has come over me
+since that he'd have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowing
+the Verona picture."
+
+She had fairly hung on his lips. "But does he know ours?"
+
+"No--not ours yet. That is"--he consciously and quickly took himself
+up--"not yours! But as Pap-pendick went to Verona for us I've asked
+Bardi to do us the great favour to come here--if Lord Theign will be so
+good," he said, bethinking himself with a turn, "as to let him examine
+the Moretto." He faced again to the personage he mentioned, who,
+simply standing off and watching, in concentrated interest as well as
+detachment, this interview of his cool daughter and her still cooler
+guest, had plainly "elected," as it were, to give them rope to hang
+themselves. Staring very hard at Hugh he met his appeal, but in a
+silence clearly calculated; against which, however, the young man,
+bearing up, made such head as he could. He offered his next word, that
+is, equally to the two companions. "It's not at all impossible--for such
+curious effects have been!--that the Dedborough picture seen _after_
+the Verona will point a different moral from the Verona seen after the
+Dedborough."
+
+"And so awfully _long_ after--wasn't it?" Lady Grace asked.
+
+"Awfully long after--it was years ago that Pappen-dick, being in this
+country for such purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when none
+of you were there, or at least visible."
+
+"Oh of course we don't see _every one!_"--she heroically kept it up.
+
+"You don't see every one," Hugh bravely laughed, "and that makes it all
+the more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shall
+really get Bardi," he pursued, "to go again to Verona----"
+
+"The last thing before coming here?"--she had guessed before he could
+say it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her for
+assent. "How happy they should like so to work for you!"
+
+"Ah, we're a band of brothers," he returned--"'we few, we happy
+few'--from country to country"; to which he added, gaining more ease for
+an eye at Lord Theign: "though we do have our little rubs and disputes,
+like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping
+_interest_ of it all; since," he developed and explained, for his elder
+friend's benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially
+at least recovered, "when we're really 'hit' over a case we'll do almost
+anything in life."
+
+Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediately
+appropriated what her father let alone. "It must be so lovely to _feel_
+so hit!"
+
+"It does spoil one," Hugh laughed, "for milder joys. Of course what I
+have to consider is the chance--putting it at the _merest_ chance--of
+Bardi's own wet blanket! But that's again so very small--though," he
+pulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as an
+almost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, "you'll retort upon me naturally
+that I promised you the possibility of Pappendick's veto would be: all
+on the poor dear old basis, you'll claim, of the wish father to the
+thought. Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Only
+give me time!" he sublimely insisted.
+
+"How can we prevent your using it?" Lady Grace again interrupted; "or
+the fact either that if the worst comes to the worst--"
+
+"The thing"--he at once pursued--"will always be at the least the
+greatest of Morettos? Ah," he cried so cheerily that there was still a
+freedom in it toward any it might concern, "the worst sha'n't come to
+the worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is that
+supports me in the deep regret I have to express"--and he faced Lord
+Theign again--"for any inconvenience I may have caused you by my
+abortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yet
+more than make up!"
+
+Lord Theign, after the longest but the blankest contemplation of
+him, broke hereupon, for the first time, that attitude of completely
+sustained and separate silence which he had yet made compatible with his
+air of having deeply noted every element of the scene--so that it was of
+this full view his participation had effectively consisted, "I haven't
+the least idea, sir, what you're talking about!" And he squarely turned
+his back, strolling toward the other room, the threshold of which he the
+next moment had passed, remaining scantily within, however, and in
+sight of the others, not to say of ourselves; even though averted and
+ostensibly lost in some scrutiny that might have had for its object the
+great enshrined Lawrence.
+
+There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, the
+richest of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided by
+the width of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then used
+for their own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now over
+Hugh's unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he must
+at once act. Lady Grace's young arms conveyed to him by a despairing
+contrite motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could do
+in his presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to
+leave the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair,
+for their full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged,
+the charged give and take of their gaze and, it might well have
+been imagined, of their passion. Hugh had for an instant a show of
+hesitation--of the arrested impulse, while he kept her father within
+range, to launch at that personage before going some final remonstrance.
+It was the girl's raised hand and gesture of warning that waved away
+for him such a mistake; he decided, under her pressure, and after a last
+searching and answering look at her reached the door and let himself
+out. The stillness was then prolonged a minute by the further wait of
+the two others, Lord Theign where he had been standing and his daughter
+on the spot from which she had not moved. It presently ended in his
+lordship's turn about as if inferring by the silence that the intruder
+had withdrawn.
+
+"Is that young man your lover?" he said as he drew again near.
+
+Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had been
+prepared. "Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short time
+ago demanded of me?"
+
+"It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy
+with him!"
+
+"You mean that if he _should_ be--what you ask me about--your exaction
+would then be modified?"
+
+"My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the
+contrary," Lord Theign pronounced, "rest on an immense new ground.
+Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth."
+
+"Won't the truth be before you, father, if you'll _think_ a
+moment--without extravagance?" After which, while, as stiffly as
+ever--and it probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly--he didn't
+rise to it, she went on: "If I _offered_ you not again to see him, does
+that make for you the appearance--?"
+
+"If you offered it, you mean, on your condition--my promising not to
+sell? I promised," said Lord Theign, "absolutely nothing at all!"
+
+She took him up with all expression. "So I promised as little! But
+that I should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your
+curiosity."
+
+She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see
+_how_ wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. "You risked
+your offer for the great equivalent over which you've so wildly worked
+yourself up."
+
+"Yes, I've worked myself--that, I grant you and don't blush for! But
+hardly so much as to renounce my 'lover'--if," she prodigiously smiled,
+"I were so fortunate as to have one!"
+
+"You renounced poor John mightily easily--whom you were so fortunate as
+to have!"
+
+Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. "Do you call Lord John
+my lover?"
+
+"He was your suitor most assuredly," Lord Theign inimitably said,
+though without looking at her; "and as strikingly encouraged as he was
+respectfully ardent!"
+
+"Encouraged by _you_, dear father, beyond doubt!"
+
+"Encouraged--er--by every one: because you were (yes, you _were!_)
+encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour as
+to whether you didn't, on your honour, turn him off because of your just
+then so stimulated views on the person who has been with us."
+
+Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than she
+could say--moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, by
+other things than harshness: "Oh father, father, father----!"
+
+He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared to
+give way to her sincerity. "Well then if I _have_ your denial I take
+it as answering my whole question--in a manner that satisfies me. If
+there's nothing, on your word, of that sort between you, you can all the
+more drop him."
+
+"But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the other
+case--that of there _being_ something!"
+
+He brushed away her logic-chopping. "If you're so keen then for past
+remarks I take up your own words--I accept your own terms for your
+putting an end to Mr. Crimble." To which, while, turning pale, she said
+nothing, he added: "You recognise that you profess yourself ready----"
+
+"Not again to see him," she now answered, "if you tell me the picture's
+safe? Yes, I recognise that I _was_ ready--as well as how scornfully
+little you then were!"
+
+"Never mind what I then was--the question's of what I actually am, since
+I close with you on it The picture's therefore as safe as you please,"
+Lord Theign pursued, "if you'll do what you just now engaged to."
+
+"I engaged to do nothing," she replied after a pause; and the face she
+turned to him had grown suddenly tragic. "I've no word to take back, for
+none passed between us; but I _won't_ do what I mentioned and what you
+at once laughed at Because," she finished, "the case is different."
+
+"Different?" he almost shouted--"_how_, different?"
+
+She didn't look at him for it, but she was none the less strongly
+distinct "He has _been_ here--and that has done it He knows," she
+admirably emphasised.
+
+"Knows what I think of him, no doubt--for a brazen young prevaricator!
+But what else?"
+
+She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. "What he will have
+seen--that I feel we're too good friends."
+
+"Then your denial of it's false," her father fairly thundered--"and you
+_are_ infatuated?"
+
+It made her the more quiet. "I like him very much."
+
+"So that your row about the picture," he demanded with passion, "has
+been all a blind?" And then as her quietness still held her: "And his a
+blind as much--to help him to get _at_ you?"
+
+She looked at him again now. "He must speak for himself. I've said what
+I mean."
+
+"But what the devil _do_ you mean?" Lord Theign, taking in the hour, had
+reached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense of
+time lamentably lost.
+
+Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and,
+hurried and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand a
+minute. Then she let everything go. "Do what you like with the picture!"
+
+He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at his
+face, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done with her
+now and immediately lost to sight. Left alone she stood a moment looking
+before her; then with a vague advance, held apparently by a quickly
+growing sense of the implication of her act, reached a table where she
+remained a little, deep afresh in thought--only the next thing to fall
+into a chair close to it and there, with her elbows on it, yield to the
+impulse of covering her flushed face with her hands.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HUGH CRIMBLE waited again in the Bruton Street drawing-room--this time
+at the afternoon hour; he restlessly shifted his place, looked at things
+about him without seeing them; all he saw, all he outwardly studied,
+was his own face and figure as he stopped an instant before a long glass
+suspended between two windows. Just as he turned from that brief and
+perhaps not wholly gratified inspection Lady Grace--that he had sent
+up his name to whom was immediately apparent--presented herself at
+the entrance from the other room. These young persons had hereupon no
+instant exchange of words; their exchange was mute--they but paused
+where they were; while the silence of each evidently tested the other
+for full confidence. A measure of this comfort came first, it would have
+appeared, to Hugh; though he then at once asked for confirmation of it.
+
+"Am I right, Lady Grace, am I right?--to have _come_, I mean, after so
+many days of not hearing, not knowing, and perhaps, all too stupidly,
+not trying." And he went on as, still with her eyes on him, she didn't
+speak; though, only, we should have guessed, from her stress of emotion.
+"Even if I'm wrong, let me tell you, I don't care--simply because,
+whatever new difficulty I may have brought about for you here a
+fortnight ago, there's something that to-day adds to my doubt and my
+fear too great a pang, and that has made me feel I can scarce bear the
+suspense of them as they are."
+
+The girl came nearer, and if her grave face expressed a pity it yet
+declined a dread. "Of what suspense do you speak? Your still being
+without the other opinion--?"
+
+"Ah, that worries me, yes; and all the more, at this hour, as I say,
+that--" He dropped it, however: "I'll tell you in a moment! My _real_
+torment, all the while, has been not to know, from day to day, what
+situation, what complication that last scene of ours with your father
+here has let you in for; and yet at the same time--having no sign nor
+sound from you!--to see the importance of not making anything possibly
+worse by approaching you again, however discreetly. I've been in the
+dark," he pursued, "and feeling that I must leave _you_ there; so that
+now--just brutally turning up once more under personal need and at any
+cost--I don't know whether I most want or most fear what I may learn
+from you."
+
+Lady Grace, listening and watching, appeared to choose between different
+ways of meeting this appeal; she had a pacifying, postponing gesture,
+marked with a beautiful authority, a sign of the value for her of what
+she gave precedence to and which waved off everything else. "Have you
+had--first of all--any news yet of Bardi?"
+
+"That I have is what has driven me straight _at_ you again--since I've
+shown you before how I turn to you at a crisis. He has come as I hoped
+and like a regular good 'un," Hugh was able to state; "I've just met
+him at the station, but I pick him up again, at his hotel in Clifford
+Street, at five. He stopped, on his way from Dover this morning, to my
+extreme exasperation, to 'sample' Canterbury, and I leave him to a
+bath and a change and tea. Then swooping down I whirl him round to Bond
+Street, where his very first apprehension of the thing (an apprehension,
+oh I guarantee you, so quick and clean and fine and wise) will be the
+flash-light projected--well," said the young man, to wind up handsomely,
+but briefly and reasonably, "over the whole field of our question."
+
+She panted with comprehension. "That of the two portraits being but the
+one sitter!"
+
+"That of the two portraits being but the one sitter. With everything so
+to the good, more and more, that bangs in, up to the head, the golden
+nail of authenticity, and"--he quite glowed through his gloom for
+it--"we take our stand in glory on the last Mantovano in the world."
+
+It was a presumption his friend visibly yearned for--but over which,
+too, with her eyes away from him, she still distinguished the shadow of
+a cloud. "That is if the flash-light comes!"
+
+"That is if it comes indeed, confound it!"--he had to enlarge a little
+under the recall of past experience. "So now, at any rate, you see my
+tension!"
+
+She looked at him again as with a vision too full for a waste of words.
+"While you on your side of course keep well in view Mr. Bender's."
+
+"Yes, while I keep well in view Mr. Bender's; though he doesn't know,
+you see, of Bardi's being at hand."
+
+"Still," said the girl, always all lucid for the case, "if the
+'flash-light' does presently break----!"
+
+"It will first take him in the eye?" Hugh had jumped to her idea, but he
+adopted it only to provide: "It might if he didn't now wear goggles, so
+to say!--clapped on him too hard by Pappendick's so damnably perverse
+opinion." With which, however, he quickly bethought himself. "Ah, of
+course, these wretched days, you haven't known of Pappendick's personal
+visit. After that wire from Verona I wired him back defiance--"
+
+"And that brought him?" she cried.
+
+"To do the honest thing, yes--I _will_ say for him: to renew, for full
+assurance, his early memory of our picture."
+
+She hung upon it. "But only to stick then to what he had telegraphed?"
+
+"To declare that for _him_, lackaday! our thing's a pure Moretto--and
+to declare as much, moreover, with all the weight of his authority, to
+Bender himself, who of course made a point of seeing him."
+
+"So that Bender"--she followed and wondered--"is, as a consequence,
+wholly off?"
+
+It made her friend's humour play up in his acute-ness. "Bender,
+Lady Grace, is, by the law of his being, never 'wholly' off--or
+on!--anything. He lives, like the moon, in mid-air, shedding his silver
+light on earth; never quite gone, yet never _all_ there--save for
+inappreciable moments. He _would_ be in eclipse as a peril, I grant,"
+Hugh went on--"if the question had struck him as really closed. But
+luckily the blessed Press--which is a pure heavenly joy and now quite
+immense on it--keeps it open as wide as Piccadilly."
+
+"Which makes, however," Lady Grace discriminated, "for the danger of a
+grab."
+
+"Ah, but all the more for the shame of a surrender! Of course I admit
+that when it's a question of a life spent, like his, in waiting,
+acquisitively, for the cat to jump, the only thing for one, at a given
+moment, as against that signal, is to be found one's self by the animal
+in the line of its trajectory. That's exactly," he laughed, "where we
+are!"
+
+She cast about as intelligently to note the place. "Your great idea, you
+mean, _has_ so worked--with the uproar truly as loud as it has seemed to
+come to us here?"
+
+"All beyond my wildest hope," Hugh returned; "since the sight of the
+picture, flocked to every day by thousands, so beautifully _tells_. That
+we must at any cost keep it, that the nation must, and hang on to it
+tight, is the cry that fills the air--to the tune of ten letters a day
+in the Papers, with every three days a gorgeous leader; to say nothing
+of more and more passionate talk all over the place, some of it awfully
+wild, but all of it wind in our sails."
+
+"I suppose it was that wind then that blew me round there to see the
+thing in its new light," Lady Grace said. "But I couldn't stay--for
+tears!"
+
+"Ah," Hugh insisted on his side for comfort, "we'll crow loudest yet!
+And don't meanwhile, just _don't_, those splendid strange eyes of the
+fellow seem consciously to plead? The women, bless them, adore him,
+cling to him, and there's talk of a 'Ladies' League of Protest'--all of
+which keeps up the pitch."
+
+"Poor Amy and I are a ladies' league," the girl joylessly joked--"as we
+now take in the 'Journal' regardless of expense."
+
+"Oh then you practically _have_ it all--since," Hugh, added after
+a brief hesitation, "I suppose Lord Theign himself doesn't languish
+uninformed."
+
+"At far-off Salsomaggiore--by the papers? No doubt indeed he isn't
+spared even the worst," said Lady Grace--"and no doubt too it's a drag
+on his cure."
+
+Her companion seemed struck with her lack of assurance. "Then you
+don't--if I may ask--hear from him?"
+
+"I? Never a word."
+
+"He doesn't write?" Hugh allowed himself to insist.
+
+"He doesn't write. And I don't write either."
+
+"And Lady Sandgate?" Hugh once more ventured.
+
+"Doesn't _she_ write?"
+
+"Doesn't _she_ hear?" said the young man, treating the other form of the
+question as a shade evasive.
+
+"I've asked her not to tell me," his friend replied--"that is if he
+simply holds out."
+
+"So that as she doesn't tell you"--Hugh was clear for the inference--"he
+of course does hold out." To which he added almost accusingly while his
+eyes searched her: "But your case is really bad."
+
+She confessed to it after a moment, but as if vaguely enjoying it. "My
+case is really bad."
+
+He had a vividness of impatience and contrition. 197
+
+"And it's I who--all too blunderingly!--have made it so?"
+
+"I've made it so myself," she said with a high head-shake, "and you, on
+the contrary--!" But here she checked her emphasis.
+
+"Ah, I've so _wanted_, through our horrid silence, to help you!" And he
+pressed to get more at the truth. "You've so quite fatally displeased
+him?"
+
+"To the last point--as I tell you. But it's not to that I refer," she
+explained; "it's to the ground of complaint I've given _you_." And then
+as this but left him blank, "It's time--it was at once time--that you
+should know," she pursued; "and yet if it's hard for me to speak, as you
+see, it was impossible for me to write. But there it is." She made her
+sad and beautiful effort. "The last thing before he left us I let the
+picture go."
+
+"You mean--?" But he could only wonder--till, however, it glimmered upon
+him. "You gave up your protest?"
+
+"I gave up my protest. I told him that--so far as I'm concerned!--he
+might do as he liked."
+
+Her poor friend turned pale at the sharp little shock of it; but if his
+face thus showed the pang of too great a surprise he yet wreathed the
+convulsion in a gay grimace. "You leave me to struggle alone?"
+
+"I leave you to struggle alone."
+
+He took it in bewilderingly, but tried again, even to the heroic,
+for optimism. "Ah well, you decided, I suppose, on some new personal
+ground."
+
+"Yes; a reason came up, a reason I hadn't to that extent looked for
+and which of a sudden--quickly, before he went--I _had_ somehow to deal
+with. So to give him my word in the dismal sense I mention was my only
+way to meet the strain." She paused; Hugh waited for something further,
+and "I gave him my word I wouldn't help you," she wound up.
+
+He turned it over. "To _act_ in the matter--I see."
+
+"To act in the matter"--she went through with it--"after the high stand
+I had taken."
+
+Still he studied it. "I see--I see. It's between you and your father."
+
+"It's between him and me--yes. An engagement not again to trouble him."
+
+Hugh, from his face, might have feared a still greater complication; so
+he made, as he would probably have said, a jolly lot of this. "Ah, that
+was nice of you. And natural. _That's_ all right!"
+
+"No"--she spoke from a deeper depth--"it's altogether wrong. For
+whatever happens I must now accept it."
+
+"Well, say you must"--he really declined not to treat it almost as
+rather a "lark"--"if we can at least go on talking."
+
+"Ah, we _can_ at least go on talking!" she perversely sighed. "I can say
+anything I like so long as I don't say it to _him_" she almost wailed.
+But she added with more firmness: "I can still hope--and I can still
+pray."
+
+He set free again with a joyous gesture all his confidence. "Well, what
+more _could_ you do, anyhow? So isn't that enough?"
+
+It took her a moment to say, and even then she didn't. "Is it enough for
+_you_, Mr. Crimble?"
+
+"What _is_ enough for me"--he could for his part readily name it--"is
+the harm done you at our last meeting by my irruption; so that if you
+got his consent to see me----!"
+
+"I didn't get his consent!"--she had turned away from the searching
+eyes, but she faced them again to rectify: "I see you against his
+express command."
+
+"Ah then thank God I came!"--it was like a bland breath on a _feu de
+joie_: he flamed so much higher.
+
+"Thank God you've come, yes--for my deplorable exposure." And to justify
+her name for it before he could protest, "I _offered_ him here not to
+see you," she rigorously explained.
+
+"'Offered him?"--Hugh did drop for it. "Not to see me--ever again?"
+
+She didn't falter. "Never again."
+
+Ah then he understood. "But he wouldn't let that serve----?"
+
+"Not for the price I put on it."
+
+"His yielding on the picture?"
+
+"His yielding on the picture."
+
+Hugh lingered before it all. "Your proposal wasn't 'good enough'?"
+
+"It wasn't good enough."
+
+"I see," he repeated--"I see." But he was in that light again mystified.
+"Then why are you therefore not free?"
+
+"Because--just after--you came back, and I _did_ see you again!"
+
+Ah, it was all present. "You found you were too sorry for me?"
+
+"I found I was too sorry for you--as he himself found I was."
+
+Hugh had got hold of it now. "And _that_, you mean, he couldn't
+stomach?"
+
+"So little that when you had gone (and _how_ you had to go you remember)
+he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a way so
+different from his own----"
+
+"To do all we want of him?"
+
+"To do all I did at least."
+
+"And it was _then_," he took in, "that you wouldn't deal?"
+
+"Well"--try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came
+straighter and straighter now--"those moments had brought you home to
+me as they had also brought _him_; making such a difference, I felt, for
+what he veered round to agree to."
+
+"The difference"--Hugh wanted it so adorably definite--"that you didn't
+see your way to accepting----?"
+
+"No, not to accepting the condition he named."
+
+"Which was that he'd keep the picture for you if you'd treat me as too
+'low'----?"
+
+"If I'd treat you," said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young
+face, "as impossible."
+
+He kept her eyes--he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. "And
+not even for the sake of the picture--?" After he had given her time,
+however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish
+him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told
+him didn't make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He _had_ it, and
+let her see by his high flush how he made it his own--while, the next
+thing, as it was but part of her avowal, the rest of that illumination
+called for a different intelligence. "Your father's reprobation of me
+personally is on the ground that you're all such great people?"
+
+She spared him the invidious answer to this as, a moment before, his
+eagerness had spared her reserve; she flung over the "ground" that his
+question laid bare the light veil of an evasion, "'Great people,' I've
+learned to see, mustn't--to remain great--do what my father's doing."
+
+"It's indeed on the theory of their not so behaving," Hugh returned,
+"that we see them--all the inferior rest of us--in the grand glamour of
+their greatness!"
+
+If he had spoken to meet her admirable frankness half-way, that beauty
+in her almost brushed him aside to make at a single step the rest of the
+journey. "You won't see them in it for long--if they don't now, under
+such tests and with such opportunities, begin to take care."
+
+This had given him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the
+closer criticism. "Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth,
+but 'takes care,' with the least trouble to himself and the finest short
+cut--does it, if you'll let me say so, rather on the cheap--by finding
+'the likes' of me, as his daughter's trusted friend, out of the
+question."
+
+"Well, you won't mind that, will you?" Lady Grace asked, "if he finds
+his daughter herself, in any such relation to you, quite as much so."
+
+"Different enough, from position to position and person to person," he
+brightly brooded, "is the view that gets itself _most_ comfortably taken
+of the implications of Honour!"
+
+"Yes," the girl returned; "my father, in the act of despoiling us
+all, all who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant
+consciousness, keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine,
+so delicate sense, by suddenly discovering that he's scandalised at my
+caring for your friendship."
+
+Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession
+promised and only waiting--or as if from that moment forth he had her
+assurance of everything that most concerned him and that might
+most inspire. "Well, isn't the moral of it all simply that what his
+perversity of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us
+is to bring us--and to keep us--blessedly together?"
+
+She seemed for a moment to question his "simply." "Do you regard us as
+so much 'together' when you remember where, in spite of everything, I've
+put myself?"
+
+"By telling him to do what he likes?" he recalled without embarrassment.
+"Oh, that wasn't in spite of 'everything'--it was only in spite of the
+Manto-vano."
+
+"'Only'?" she flushed--"when I've given the picture up?"
+
+"Ah," Hugh cried, "I don't care a hang for the picture!" And then as she
+let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands:
+"We both only care, don't we, that we're given to each other thus? We
+both only care, don't we, that nothing can keep us apart?"
+
+"Oh, if you've forgiven me--!" she sighed into his fond face.
+
+"Why, since you gave the thing up _for_ me," he pleadingly laughed, "it
+isn't as if you had given _me_ up----!"
+
+"For anything, anything? Ah never, never!" she breathed.
+
+"Then why aren't we all right?"
+
+"Well, if you will----!"
+
+"Oh for ever and ever and ever!"--and with this ardent cry of his
+devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his
+breast and to his lips.
+
+The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning "Amy
+Sandgate!"--as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room. Lady
+Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them--their disjunction had
+scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer threshold. They
+had at once put the widest space possible between them--a little of
+the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch at
+composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one side
+and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a few
+moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of;
+from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt
+and responsible address to Hugh. "Mustn't you go without more delay to
+Clifford Street?"
+
+He came back to it all alert "At once!" He had recovered his hat and
+reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder
+lady. "Please pardon me"--and he disappeared.
+
+Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the
+girl. "Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father's suddenly
+at hand?"
+
+"He has come back?"--Lady Grace was sharply struck.
+
+"He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to
+Kitty--according to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back
+late from my luncheon. He has returned with a rush--as," said his
+correspondent in the elation of triumph, "I was _sure_ he would!"
+
+Her young friend was more at sea. "Brought back, you mean, by the
+outcry--even though he so hates it?"
+
+But she was more and more all lucidity--save in so far as she was now
+almost all authority. "Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come
+back to face the music!"
+
+Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which
+the music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to
+a positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride.
+"Yes--that's dear old father!"
+
+And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject?
+"At the point the row has reached he couldn't stand it another day; so
+he has thrown up his cure and--lest we should oppose him!--not even
+announced his start."
+
+"Well," her companion returned, "now that I've _done_ it all I shall
+never oppose him again!"
+
+Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she
+might have received on entering. "He'll only oppose _you!_"
+
+"If he does," said Lady Grace, "we're at present two to bear it."
+
+"Heaven save us then"--the elder woman was quick, was even cordial, for
+the sense of this--"your good friend _is_ clever!"
+
+Lady Grace honoured the remark. "Mr. Crim-ble's remarkably clever."
+
+"And you've arranged----?"
+
+"We haven't arranged--but we've understood. So that, dear Amy, if _you_
+understand--!" Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the hall.
+
+"His lordship has arrived?" his mistress immediately put to him.
+
+"No, my lady, but Lord John has--to know if he's expected _here_, and in
+that case, by your ladyship's leave, to come up."
+
+Her ladyship turned to the girl. "May Lord John--as we do await your
+father--come up?"
+
+"As suits _you_, please!"
+
+"He may come up," said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. "His lordship's
+expected." She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went
+on to her companion: "You asked me just now if I understood. Well--I do
+understand!"
+
+Lady Grace, with Gotch's withdrawal, which left the door open, had
+reached the passage to the other room. "Then you'll excuse me!"--she
+made her escape.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter and
+quite waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of his
+eagerness and tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. "What
+on earth then do you suppose he has come back to _do_--?" To which he
+added while his hostess's gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture:
+"Because when a fellow really finds himself the centre of a
+cyclone----!"
+
+"Isn't it just at the centre," she interrupted, "that you keep
+remarkably still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I
+count on dear Theign's doing nothing in the least foolish--!"
+
+"Ah, but he can't have chucked everything for nothing," Lord John
+sharply returned; "and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can't
+not meet somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a great
+nobleman and good citizen."
+
+"It's his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the
+scapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!" Lady
+Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
+
+"Yes," Lord John concluded for her, "the mercenary millions on whose
+traffic in their trumpery values--when they're so lucky as to have
+any!--_this_ isn't a patch!"
+
+"Oh, there are cases _and_ cases: situations and responsibilities so
+intensely differ!"--that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the
+moral to be gathered.
+
+"Of course everything differs, all round, from everything," Lord John
+went on; "and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the
+victim of circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest
+motives, to be literally torn to pieces?"
+
+"Well," said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshly
+consulted her bracelet watch, "I hope he isn't already torn--if you tell
+me you've been to Kitty's."
+
+"Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again," the
+young man explained, "as Lady Imber hadn't been at home."
+
+"Ah cool Kitty!" his hostess sighed again--but diverted, as she spoke,
+by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding Lord
+Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb
+of travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearning
+tenderness and compassionate curiosity. "At last, dearest friend--what a
+joy! But with Kitty not at home to receive you?"
+
+That young woman's parent made light of it for the indulged creature's
+sake. "Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty."
+To which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord
+John: "But Bender, who came there before my arrival--he hasn't tried for
+me here?"
+
+It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive.
+"I met him at the club at luncheon; he had had your letter--but for
+which chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You'll see him
+all right at this house; but I'm glad, if I may say so, Theign," the
+speaker pursued with some emphasis--"I'm glad, you know, to get hold of
+you first."
+
+Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but his
+other companion's apprehension had already overflowed. "You haven't come
+back, have you--to whatever it may be!--for _trouble_ of any sort with
+Breckenridge?"
+
+His lordship transferred his penetration to this fair friend, "Have
+you become so intensely absorbed--these remarkable days!--in
+'Breckenridge'?"
+
+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 Lord John--"three extraordinarily vulgar pages about the egregious
+Pap-pendick!"
+
+"About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, as
+Breckenridge says, marked the picture down?"--the young man was clearly
+all-knowing. "That _has_ of course weighed on Bender--being confirmed
+apparently, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion."
+
+Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some of
+his friend's terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the
+babbler or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. "He too
+has known me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of 'the drift of
+public opinion'!" After which he quite charged at his vain informant.
+"Am I to tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of public
+opinion?--which is but another name for the chatter of all the fools one
+doesn't know, in addition to all those (and plenty of 'em!) one damnably
+does."
+
+Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse.
+"Ah, you did _that_, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!"
+
+"I don't speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on
+_you_," Lord John importantly explained--"but in the light of its effect
+on Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he _is_ to have it,
+to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last for anything
+but the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been."
+
+Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication,
+betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptly
+restored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action.
+"Well, isn't a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?"
+
+It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. "A fine old
+Moretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough--for its
+comparative, strictly comparative, insignificance; and he only thought
+of the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity--"
+
+"That that mendacious young cad who has bamboozled Grace," Lord Theign
+broke in, "tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claiming
+for it?"
+
+Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. "Ah, the knowing people
+haven't had their last word--the possible Mantovano isn't exploded
+_yet!_" Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. "I've
+had enough of the knowing people--the knowing people are serpents! My
+picture's to take or to leave--and it's what I've come back, if you
+please, John, to say to your man to his face."
+
+This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as the
+successive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smoke
+cleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing and smiling.
+"Yes, why in mercy's name can't he choose _which?_--and why does he
+write him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome argumentative letters?"
+
+Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had been
+working in him rather vehemently, though under due caution too, as a
+consequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively watched
+his elder. "I don't think I quite see _how_, my dear Theign, the poor
+chap's letter was so offensive."
+
+In that case his dear Theign could tell him. "Because it was a tissue
+of expressions that may pass current--over counters and in awful
+newspapers--in _his_ extraordinary world or country, but that I decline
+to take time to puzzle out here."
+
+"If he didn't make himself understood," Lord John took leave to laugh,
+"it must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender."
+
+"Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his
+turns, haven't a notion," Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety,
+"of what he's talking about."
+
+"I think I never miss his weird sense," her younger guest again loyally
+contended--"and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!"
+
+"I happen to like nothing that I don't enjoy," Lord Theign rejoined with
+some asperity--"and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my
+part an interest in his expenditure of purchase-money that I neither
+feel nor pretend to. He doesn't want--by what I spell out--the picture
+he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want--if one reads it so--the
+picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with great
+emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two 'articles' (the
+greatest of Morettos an 'article'!) haven't been 'by now' proved
+different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove them!"
+
+Lord John indulged in a pause--but also in a suggestion. "He must
+allude to your hoping--when you allowed us to place the picture with
+Mackintosh--that it would show to all London in the most precious light
+conceivable."
+
+"Well, if it hasn't so shown"--and Lord Theign stared as if
+mystified--"what in the world's the meaning of this preposterous
+racket?"
+
+"The racket is largely," his young friend explained, "the vociferation
+of the people who contradict each other about it."
+
+On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question.
+"Some--yes--shouting on the housetops that's a Mantovano of the
+Mantovanos, and others shrieking back at them that they're donkeys if
+not criminals."
+
+"He may take it for whatever he likes," said Lord Theign, heedless of
+these contributions, "he may father it on Michael Angelo himself if
+he'll but clear out with it and let me alone!"
+
+"What he'd _like_ to take it for," Lord John at this point saw his way
+to remark, "is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand."
+
+"A Hundred Thousand?" cried his astonished friend.
+
+"Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand"--the young man enjoyed clearly
+handling even by the lips so round a sum.
+
+Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility any appearance of having
+gaped. "Why, haven't you yet realised, Theign, that those are the
+American figures?"
+
+His lordship looked at her fixedly and then did the same by Lord John,
+after which he waited a little. "I've nothing to do with the American
+figures--which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite intolerably
+vulgar."
+
+"Well, I'd be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!" Lady
+Sandgate hastened to proclaim.
+
+"Didn't he let us know at Dedborough," Lord John asked of the master of
+that seat, "that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?"
+
+"I've heard him remark myself," said their companion, rising to the
+monstrous memory, "that he wouldn't take a cheap picture--even though a
+'handsome' one--as a present."
+
+"And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?" the
+proprietor of the work demanded.
+
+Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience. "All he wants to
+do, don't you see? is to prevent your _making_ it one!"
+
+Lord Theign glared at this imputation to him of a low ductility. "I
+offered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy of it--and of _me_."
+
+"My dear reckless friend," his young adviser protested, "you named no
+figure _at all_ when it came to the point----!"
+
+"It _didn't_ come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I put
+a Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly"--Lord Theign accepted the
+reminding gesture--"on which a rich American had an eye and in which he
+had, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and so we left
+it--parting each of us ready but neither of us bound."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Bender's bound, as he'd say," Lady Sand-gate
+interposed--"'bound' to make you swallow the enormous luscious plum that
+your appetite so morbidly rejects!"
+
+"My appetite, as morbid as you like"--her old friend had shrewdly turned
+on her--"is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in enormities I
+warn him to carry them elsewhere!"
+
+Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated at the absurdity
+of him. "But how can't you see that it's only a plum, as she says, for
+a plum and an eye for an eye--since the picture itself, with this huge
+ventilation, is now quite a different affair?"
+
+"How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himself
+confesses is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants,
+there's no really established ground for treating it as anything but
+the same?" On which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shook
+himself free again, in his high petulance, and moved restlessly to where
+the passage to the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; all
+moreover to the effect of suggesting to us that something still other
+than what he had said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneath
+that quantity. The spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time,
+in uncertainty and with a mute but associated comment on the perversity
+and oddity he had so suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug of
+almost bored despair and Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact for
+their action by a finger flourished to her lips, and in fact at once
+proceeding to apply these arts. The subject of her attention had still
+remained as in worried thought; he had even mechanically taken up a book
+from a table--which he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
+
+"You're so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer," she began--"and
+unless you stick to _that_ you might as well have done nothing. What
+you call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly
+what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to
+be _allowed_ to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers
+haven't settled anything for those who know--though which of the elect
+themselves after all _does_ seem to know?--it's a great service rendered
+him to have started such a hare to run!"
+
+Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. "Certainly
+his connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end for
+his glory."
+
+It didn't, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least
+made his indifference flash with derision. "His 'glory'--Mr. Bender's
+glory? Why, they quite universally loathe him--judging by the stuff they
+print!"
+
+"Oh, here--as a corrupter of our morals and a promoter of our decay,
+even though so many are flat on their faces to him--yes! But it's
+another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand
+steam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest:
+_there_ he'll be, if you'll only let him, the biggest thing going; since
+sound, in that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts.
+If he said of the thing, as you recognise," Lord John went on, "'It's
+going to be a Mantovano,' why you can bet your life that it _is_--that
+it has _got_ to be some kind of a one."
+
+His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would
+have been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair--worked up
+to something quite openly wilful and passionate. "No kind of a furious
+flaunting one, under _my_ patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The
+Dedborough picture in the market--owing to horrid little circumstances
+that regard myself alone--is the Dedborough picture at a decent,
+sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which
+I beg you will take as my last word on the subject."
+
+Lord John, trying whether he _could_ take it, momentarily mingled his
+hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless
+look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only
+reassert himself. "May I nevertheless reply that I think you'll not be
+able to prevent _anything?_--since the discussed object will completely
+escape your control in New York!"
+
+"And almost any discussed object"--Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion
+also--"is in New York, by what one hears, easily _worth_ a Hundred
+Thousand!"
+
+Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. "I sell the man a
+Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent
+swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?"
+
+"Well"--Lord John was but briefly baffled--"when the picture's his you
+can't help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!"
+
+"Then it isn't his yet," the elder man retorted--"and I promise you
+never will be if he has _sent_ you to me with his big drum!"
+
+Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as
+if the case were now really beyond them. "Yes, how indeed can it ever
+_become_ his if Theign simply won't let him pay for it?"
+
+Her question was unanswerable. "It's the first time in all my life I've
+known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening
+_not_ to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!"
+
+"Theign is unable to take it in," her ladyship explained, "that--as I've
+heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type--Bender simply
+can't _afford_ not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer who
+ever lived."
+
+"Ah, cited and celebrated at my _expense_--say it at once and have it
+over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!"
+
+"The dear man's inimitable--at his 'expense'!" It was more than Lord
+John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence
+and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
+
+"Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean," Lord Theign
+asseverated--"at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour
+by my own standards. There you perfectly _are_ about the man, and it's
+precisely what I say--that he's to hustle and harry me _because_ he's a
+money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand,
+when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource at
+Dedborough. I didn't put my property on view that _he_ might blow about
+it------!"
+
+"No, if you like it," Lady Sandgate returned; "but you certainly didn't
+so arrange"--she seemed to think her point somehow would help--"that
+you might blow about it yourself!"
+
+"Nobody wants to 'blow,'" Lord John more stoutly interposed, "either hot
+or cold, I take it; but I really don't see the harm of Bender's liking
+to be known for the scale of his transactions--actual or merely imputed
+even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent."
+
+Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. "The only
+question perhaps is why he doesn't try for some precious work that
+somebody--less delicious than dear Theign--_can_ be persuaded on bended
+knees to accept a hundred thousand for."
+
+"'Try' for one?"--her younger visitor took it up while her elder more
+attentively watched him. "That was exactly what he did try for when he
+pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua."
+
+"Oh well, he mustn't come back to _that_--must he, Theign?" her ladyship
+cooed.
+
+That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious
+apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed
+himself. "Besides which there _are_ no things of that magnitude knocking
+about, don't you know?--they've _got_ to be worked up first if they're
+to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind," he
+continued to his noble monitor, "an agreement on some such basis as
+_this_?--that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you'll
+squeamishly consent to take, if it's at the same time the smallest he'll
+squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him
+free----"
+
+Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion
+only waited. "Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum
+taken as practically one and the same?"
+
+"Ah, you know," Lord John discriminated, "he doesn't 'talk' so much
+himself--there's really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It's
+the rate at which--by the very way he's 'fixed': an awful way indeed, I
+grant you!--a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at his heels, are
+always talking for him and of him."
+
+Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that
+had been slowly gathering force. "_You_ talk for him, my dear chap,
+pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assured
+of a commission on the job--on a fine ascending scale! Has he put you
+up to that proposition, eh? _Do_ you get a handsome percentage and _are_
+you to make a good thing of it?"
+
+The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry--whether from a
+good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise
+showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch.
+"As he's to come to you himself--and I don't know why the mischief he
+doesn't come!--he will answer you that graceful question."
+
+"Will he answer it," Lord Theign asked, "with the veracity that
+the suggestion you've just made on his behalf represents him as so
+beautifully adhering to?" On which he again quite fiercely turned his
+back and recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a
+blanker dismay.
+
+Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. "I don't see why
+you should speak as if I were urging some abomination."
+
+"Then I'll tell you why!"--and Lord Theign was upon him again for the
+purpose. "Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright and
+for good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the
+interest of such equivocations!"
+
+Lady Sandgate's dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently
+in turn to her amusement. "'Give it away,' my dear friend, to a man who
+only longs to smother you in gold?"
+
+Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. "Give it
+away--just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter--to some
+cause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender's power of sound and
+his splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the
+Thingumbob, to the Nation!"
+
+Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and
+stupefied. "Ah, my dear creature, you've flights of extravagance----!"
+
+"One thing's very certain," Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued--"that
+the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my
+nerves, more and more every minute that I'm conscious of it; so that,
+hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn't I, for my relief, do again,
+damme, _what I like_?--that is bang the door in their faces, have the
+show immediately stopped?" He turned with the attraction of this idea
+from one of his listeners to the other. "It's _my_ show--it isn't
+Bender's, surely!--and I can do just as I choose with it."
+
+"Ah, but isn't that the very point?"--and Lady Sandgate put it to Lord
+John. "Isn't it Bender's show much more than his?"
+
+Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of
+disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly--while Lord Theign, on
+the other hand, followed up his happy thought. "Then if it's Bender's
+show, or if he claims it is, there's all the more reason!" And it took
+his lordship's inspiration no longer to flower. "See here, John--do
+this: go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to
+shut straight down!"
+
+"'Shut straight down'?" the young man abhorrently echoed.
+
+"Stop it _to-night_--wind it up and end it: see?" The more the
+entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly
+took on for him. "Have the picture removed from view and the incident
+closed."
+
+"You seriously ask _that_ of me!" poor Lord John quavered.
+
+"Why in the world shouldn't I? It's a jolly lot less than you asked of
+me a month ago at Dedborough."
+
+"What then am I to say to them?" Lord John spoke but after a long
+moment, during which he had only looked hard and--an observer might even
+then have felt--ominously at his taskmaster.
+
+That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. "Say
+anything that comes into your clever head. I don't really see that
+there's anything else _for_ you!" Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger,
+who gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
+
+The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; then
+he eyed his friend significantly--almost portentously. "Those are
+absolutely your sentiments?"
+
+"Those are absolutely my sentiments"--and Lord Theign brought this out
+as with the force of a physical push.
+
+"Very well then!" But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly
+sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the
+extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. "Not one more day?"
+
+Lord Theign only waved him away. "Not one more hour!"
+
+He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme
+protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the
+two pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance,
+he clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed on
+his mission.
+
+
+
+
+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 thought--he wondered; and then as if fairly amused at
+himself: "Hanged if I know what _is_ my own price!" After which he went
+for his hat. "But there's one thing," he remembered as he came back with
+it: "where's my too, _too_ unnatural daughter?"
+
+"If you mean Grace and really want her I'll send and find out."
+
+"Not now"--he bethought himself. "But does she _see_ that chatterbox?"
+
+"Mr. Crimble? Yes, she sees him."
+
+He kept his eyes on her. "Then how far has it gone?"
+
+Lady Sandgate overcame an embarrassment. "Well, not even yet, I think,
+so far as they'd like."
+
+"They'd 'like'--heaven save the mark!--to marry?"
+
+"I suspect them of it. What line, if it should come to that," she asked,
+"would you then take?"
+
+He was perfectly prompt. "The line that for Grace it's simply ignoble."
+
+The force of her deprecation of such language was qualified by tact.
+"Ah, darling, as dreadful as _that?_"
+
+He could but view the possibility with dark resentment. "It lets us so
+down--from what we've always been and done; so down, down, down that I'm
+amazed you don't feel it!"
+
+"Oh, I feel there's still plenty to keep you up!" she soothingly
+laughed.
+
+He seemed to consider this vague amount--which he apparently judged,
+however, not so vast as to provide for the whole yearning of his nature.
+"Well, my dear," he thus more blandly professed, "I shall need all the
+extra _agr�ment_ that your affection can supply."
+
+If nothing could have been, on this, richer response, nothing could
+at the same time have bee more pleasing than her modesty. "Ah, my
+affectionate Theign, is, as I think you know, a fountain always in
+flood; but in any more worldly element than that--as you've ever seen
+for yourself--a poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not
+'great' as they used so finely to call it! You _are_--with the natural
+sense of greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man
+doing and taking things."
+
+He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for
+the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. "If you mean that I hold
+up my head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much
+longer possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the
+name of goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them,
+and is it really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her
+license and a specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I'm in
+danger of helplessly to swallow the dose?"
+
+"Do you find Mr. Crimble," Lady Sandgate as if there might really be
+something to say, "so utterly out of the question?"
+
+"I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree
+offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one's poor dear
+decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would
+forbid _that_ kind of relation."
+
+What kind of relation, if any, Hugh's deficiencies might still render
+thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of
+Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether assured
+sound of "Mr. Breckenridge Bender." The guest in possession gave a cry
+of impatience, but Lady Sandgate said "Coming up?"
+
+"If his lordship will see him."
+
+"Oh, he's beyond his time," his lordship pronounced--"I can't see him
+now!"
+
+"Ah, but _mustn't_ you--and mayn't _I_ then?" She waited, however, for
+no response to signify to her servant "Let him come," and her companion
+could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he wondered
+at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a little
+that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. "Does the kind of relation
+you'd be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down, as you
+say, more than the relation you've been having with Mr. Bender?"
+
+Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. "Do you mean
+don't I hate 'em equally both?"
+
+She cut his further reply short, however, by a "Hush!" of warning--Mr.
+Bender was there and his introducer had left them.
+
+Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon
+little to ceremony. "I've but a moment, to my regret, to give you, Mr.
+Bender, and if you've been unavoidably detained, as you great bustling
+people are so apt to be, it will perhaps still be soon enough for
+your comfort to hear from me that I've just given order to close our
+exhibition. From the present hour on, sir"--he put it with the firmness
+required to settle the futility of an appeal.
+
+Mr. Bender's large surprise lost itself, however, promptly enough,
+in Mr. Bender's larger ease. "Why, do you really mean it, Lord
+Theign?--removing already from view a work that gives innocent
+gratification to thousands?"
+
+"Well," said his lordship curtly, "if thousands have seen it I've done
+what I wanted, and if they've been gratified I'm content--and invite
+_you_ to be."
+
+Mr. Bender showed more keenness for this richer implication. "In other
+words it's I who may remove the picture?"
+
+"Well--if you'll take it on my estimate."
+
+"But what, Lord Theign, all this time," Mr. Bender almost pathetically
+pleaded, "_is_ your estimate?"
+
+The parting guest had another pause, which prolonged itself, after
+he had reached the door, in a deep solicitation of their hostess's
+conscious eyes. This brief passage apparently inspired his answer. "Lady
+Sandgate will tell you." The door closed behind him.
+
+The charming woman smiled then at her other friend, whose comprehensive
+presence appeared now to demand of her some account of these strange
+proceedings. "He means that your own valuation is much too shockingly
+high."
+
+"But how can I know _how_ much unless I find out what he'll take?"
+The great collector's spirit had, in spite of its volume, clearly not
+reached its limit of expansion. "Is he crazily waiting for the thing to
+be proved _not_ what Mr. Crimble claims?"
+
+"No, he's waiting for nothing--since he holds that claim demolished by
+Pappendick's tremendous negative, which you wrote to tell him of."
+
+Vast, undeveloped and suddenly grave, Mr. Bender's countenance showed
+like a barren tract under a black cloud. "I wrote to _report_, fair and
+square, on Pap-pendick, but to tell him I'd take the picture just the
+same, negative and all."
+
+"Ah, but take it in that way not for what it is but for what it isn't."
+
+"We know nothing about what it 'isn't,'" said Mr. Bender, "after all
+that has happened--we've only learned a little better every day what it
+is."
+
+"You mean," his companion asked, "the biggest bone of artistic
+contention----?"
+
+"Yes,"--he took it from her--"the biggest that has been thrown into the
+arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for _that_."
+
+Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance;
+it was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.
+"Well, if it's the biggest bone I won't touch it; I'll leave it to be
+mauled by my betters. But since his lordship has asked me to name a
+price, dear Mr. Bender, I'll name one--and as you prefer big prices I'll
+try to make it suit you. Only it won't be for the portrait of a person
+nobody is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my
+great-grandmother."
+
+"Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!"--and her visitor turned from her with the
+hunch of overcharged shoulders.
+
+But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such
+a conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. "You've
+been delivered into my hands--too charmingly; and you won't really
+pretend that you don't recognise that and in fact rather like it."
+
+He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness
+unparalleled--though indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the
+question of whether he had been artfully practised upon; an indifference
+to bad debts or peculation like that of some huge hotel or other
+business involving a margin for waste. He could afford, he could work
+waste too, clearly--and what was it, that term, you might have felt him
+ask, but a mean measure, anyway? quite as the "artful," opposed to his
+larger game, would be the hiding and pouncing of children at play. "Do
+I gather that those uncanny words of his were just meant to put me
+off?" he inquired. And then as she but boldly and smilingly shrugged,
+repudiating responsibility, "Look here, Lady Sandgate, ain't you
+honestly going to help me?" he pursued.
+
+This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. "Mr. Bender,
+Mr. Bender, I'll help you if you'll help _me!_"
+
+"You'll really get me something from him to go on with?"
+
+"I'll get you something from him to go on with."
+
+"That's all I ask--to get _that_. Then I can move the way I want. But
+without it I'm held up."
+
+"You shall have it," she replied, "if I in turn may look to _you_ for a
+trifle on account."
+
+"Well," he dryly gloomed at her, "what do you call a trifle?"
+
+"I mean"--she waited but an instant--"what you would feel as one."
+
+"That won't do. You haven't the least idea, Lady Sandgate," he earnestly
+said, "_how_ I feel at these foolish times. I've never got used to them
+yet."
+
+"Ah, don't you understand," she pressed, "that if I give you an
+advantage I'm completely at your mercy?"
+
+"Well, what mercy," he groaned, "do you deserve?"
+
+She waited a little, brightly composed--then she indicated her inner
+shrine, the whereabouts of her precious picture. "Go and look at her
+again and you'll see."
+
+His protest was large, but so, after a moment, was his compliance--his
+heavy advance upon the other room, from just within the doorway of which
+the great Lawrence was serenely visible. Mr. Bender gave it his eyes
+once more--though after the fashion verily of a man for whom it had now
+no freshness of a glamour, no shade of a secret; then he came back to
+his hostess. "Do you call giving me an advantage squeezing me by your
+sweet modesty for less than I may possibly bear?"
+
+"How can I say fairer," she returned, "than that, with my backing about
+the other picture, which I've passed you my word for, thrown in, I'll
+resign myself to whatever you may be disposed--characteristically!--to
+give for this one."
+
+"If it's a question of resignation," said Mr. Bender, "you mean of
+course what I may be disposed--characteristically!--_not_ to give."
+
+She played on him for an instant all her radiance. "Yes then, you dear
+sharp rich thing!"
+
+"And you take in, I assume," he pursued, "that I'm just going to lean on
+you, for what I want, with the full weight of a determined man."
+
+"Well," she laughed, "I promise you I'll thoroughly obey the direction
+of your pressure."
+
+"All right then!" And he stopped before her, in his unrest, monumentally
+pledged, yet still more massively immeasurable. "How'll you have it?"
+
+She bristled as with all the possible beautiful choices; then she shed
+her selection as a heaving fruit-tree might have dropped some round
+ripeness. It was for her friend to pick up his plum and his privilege.
+"Will you write a cheque?"
+
+"Yes, if you want it right away." To which, however, he added, clapping
+vainly a breast-pocket: "But my cheque-book's down in my car."
+
+"At the door?" She scarce required his assent to touch a bell. "I can
+easily send for it." And she threw off while they waited: "It's so sweet
+your 'flying round' with your cheque-book!"
+
+He put it with promptitude another way. "It flies round pretty well with
+_Mr_----!"
+
+"Mr. Bender's cheque-book--in his car," she went on to Gotch, who had
+answered her summons.
+
+The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: "You'll find
+in the pocket a large red morocco case."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Gotch--but with another word for his mistress.
+"Lord John would like to know--"
+
+"Lord John's there?" she interrupted.
+
+Gotch turned to the open door. "Here he is, my lady."
+
+She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender's eye, to the
+complication involved in his lordship's presence. "It's he who went
+round to Bond Street."
+
+Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. "To stop the show?" And then
+as the young man was already there: "You've stopped the show?"
+
+"It's 'on' more than ever!" Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a
+hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the
+backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. "But Theign should
+be here!"--he addressed her excitedly. "I announce you a call from the
+Prince."
+
+"The Prince?"--she gasped as for the burden of the honour. "He follows
+you?"
+
+Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking,
+recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of associational
+advantage and auspicious possibility. "Is the Prince _after_ the thing?"
+
+Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing
+but his message. "He was there with Mackintosh--to see and admire the
+picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!--and
+did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh
+in his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our noble friend
+and of which, embarrassed though I doubtless was," the young man pursued
+to Lady Sandgate, "I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so
+delighted with it that he declared they mustn't think then of taking the
+thing off, but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it's
+worth, and he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and
+explain him his reasons."
+
+Their hostess cast about for a sign. "Why Theign is at Kitty's, worse
+luck! The Prince calls on him _here?_"
+
+"He calls, you see, on _you_, my lady--at five-forty-five; and
+graciously desired me so to put it you."
+
+"He's very kind, but"--she took in her condition--"I'm not even
+_dressed!_"
+
+"You'll have time"--the young man was a comfort--"while I rush to
+Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender--though it's so near--if I just
+bag your car."
+
+"That's, that's it, take his car!"--Lady Sandgate almost swept him away.
+
+"You may use my car all right," Mr. Bender contributed--"but what I want
+to know is what the man's _after_."
+
+"The man? what man?" his friend scarce paused to ask.
+
+"The Prince then--if you allow he _is_ a man! Is he after my picture?"
+
+Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. "If you'll wait, my dear fellow,
+you'll see."
+
+"Oh why should he 'wait'?" burst from their cautious companion--only
+to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious
+revolution. "Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender--I won't give you up for
+any Prince!" With which she appealed again to Lord John. "He wants to
+'congratulate'?"
+
+"On Theign's decision, as I've told you--which I announced to
+Mackintosh, by Theign's extraordinary order, under his Highness's nose,
+and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot."
+
+Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick
+perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the
+Prince's interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their
+actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. "The
+decision to remove the picture?"
+
+Lord John also observed a discretion. "He wouldn't hear of such a
+thing--says it must stay stock still. So there you are!"
+
+This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a
+clamorous, series of questions. "But _where_ are we, and what has the
+Prince to do with Lord Theign's decision when that's all _I'm_ here for?
+What in thunder _is_ Lord Theign's decision--what was his 'extraordinary
+order'?"
+
+Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this
+solicitor as he had already been put off. "Lady Sandgate, _you_ tell
+him! I rush!"
+
+Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. "What the
+h---- then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what
+'sentiments' did he report round there that Lord Theign had been
+expressing?"
+
+His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to
+recognise the subject of his curiosity--for fear of other recognitions.
+"They put everything on _me_, my dear man--but I haven't the least
+idea."
+
+He looked at her askance. "Then why does the fellow say you have?"
+
+Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. "Because the
+fellow's so agog that he doesn't know _what_ he says!" In addition
+to which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on
+a salver the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called
+attention.
+
+"The large red morocco case."
+
+Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. "Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on
+my desk," she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again
+before she resumed to her visitor: "Mightn't we conclude before he
+comes?"
+
+"The Prince?" Mr. Bender's imagination had strayed from the ground to
+which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps.
+"Will _he_ want your great-grandmother?"
+
+"Well, he may when he sees her!" Lady Sandgate laughed. "And Theign,
+when he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every
+information. Shall I fish it out for you?" she encouragingly asked,
+beside him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her
+persuasive guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him,
+opening out the gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but
+to help himself. "What enormous cheques! _You_ can never draw one for
+two-pound-ten!"
+
+"That's exactly what you deserve I _should_ do!" He remained after this
+solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with ceremonies;
+in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held out to
+him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they might
+have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.
+
+He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before
+him on the table, coming away with a brave gay "Well, I leave it to
+you!" She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance
+for many minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the
+recurrent Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.
+
+"Mr. Crimble, please--for Lady Grace."
+
+"Mr. Crimble _again?_"--she took it discomposedly.
+
+It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. "Mr.
+Crimble? Why he's just the man I want to see!"
+
+Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. "Here he is,
+my lady."
+
+"Then tell her ladyship."
+
+"She has come down," said Gotch while Hugh arrived and his companion
+withdrew, and while Lady Grace, reaching the scene from the other
+quarter, emerged in bright equipment--in her hat, scarf and gloves.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+These young persons were thus at once confronted across the room, and
+the girl explained her preparation. "I was listening hard--for your
+knock and your voice."
+
+"Then know that, thank God, it's all right!"--Hugh was breathless,
+jubilant, radiant.
+
+"A Mantovano?" she delightedly cried.
+
+"A Mantovano!" he proudly gave back.
+
+"A Mantovano!"--it carried even Lady Sandgate away.
+
+"A Mantovano--a sure thing?" Mr. Bender jumped up from his business, all
+gaping attention to Hugh.
+
+"I've just left our blest Bardi," said that young man--"who hasn't the
+shadow of a doubt and is delighted to publish it everywhere."
+
+"Will he publish it right here to _me?_" Mr. Bender hungrily asked.
+
+"Well," Hugh smiled, "you can try him."
+
+"But try him how, where?" The great collector, straining to instant
+action, cast about for his hat "Where _is_ he, hey?"
+
+"Don't you wish I'd tell you?" Hugh, in his personal elation, almost
+cynically answered.
+
+"Won't you wait for the Prince?" Lady Sandgate had meanwhile asked of
+her friend; but had turned more inspectingly to Lady Grace before he
+could reply. "My dear child--though you're lovely!--are you sure you're
+ready for him?"
+
+"For the Prince!"--the girl was vague. "Is he coming?"
+
+"At five-forty-five." With which she consulted her bracelet watch, but
+only at once to wail for alarm. "Ah, it _is_ that, and I'm not dressed!"
+She hurried off through the other room.
+
+Mr. Bender, quite accepting her retreat, addressed himself again
+unabashed to Hugh: "It's your blest Bardi I want first--I'll take the
+Prince after."
+
+The young man clearly could afford indulgence now. "Then I left him at
+Long's Hotel."
+
+"Why, right near! I'll come back." And Mr. Bender's flight was on the
+wings of optimism.
+
+But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. "Why does the
+Prince come, and what in the world's happening?"
+
+"My father has suddenly returned--it may have to do with that."
+
+The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. "Mayn't
+it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?"
+
+"I don't know--and I think I don't care. I don't care," she said, "so
+long as you're right and as the greatest light of all declares you are."
+
+"He _is_ the greatest"--Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: "I could
+see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature! There,
+_before_ the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for those
+great moments, practically to ourselves--without Macintosh to take in
+what was happening or any one else at all to speak of--it was but a
+matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and _I_ had conquered."
+
+"Naturally you had!"--the girl hung on him for it; "and what was
+happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear
+divination, one of the divinations of genius--with every creature all
+these ages so stupid--you were being baptized on the spot a great man."
+
+"Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn't think
+_he's_ one: that that eminent judge couldn't, even with such a leg up,
+rise to my level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,"
+Hugh went on in his gladness, "what for _us_ has most particularly and
+preciously taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career--"
+
+"Your reputation," she cried, "blazes out and your fortune's made?"
+
+He did a happy violence to his modesty. "Well, Bardi adores intelligence
+and takes off his hat to me."
+
+"Then you need take off yours to nobody!"--such was Lady Grace's proud
+opinion. "But I should like to take off mine to _him_," she added;
+"which I seem to have put on--to get out and away with you--expressly
+for that."
+
+Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. "Ah, we'll go forth
+together to him then--thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!--and
+you'll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me."
+
+His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. "The only thing is
+that our awful American----!"
+
+But he warned her with a raised hand. "Not to speak of our awful
+Briton!"
+
+For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign,
+unattended, who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled
+up and held them a minute in reprehensive view--all at least till Hugh
+undauntedly, indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.
+
+"Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it's because I've a
+small, but precious document to deliver you, if you'll allow me to do
+so; which I feel it important myself to place in your hand." He drew
+from his breast a pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed
+envelope; retaining the latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while
+Lord Theign only opposed to this demonstration an unmitigated blankness.
+He went none the less bravely on. "I mentioned to you the last time we
+somewhat infelicitously met that I intended to appeal to another and
+probably more closely qualified artistic authority on the subject of
+your so-called Moretto; and I in fact saw the picture half an hour ago
+with Bardi of Milan, who, there in presence of it, did absolute, did
+ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the claim I've been making. I then
+went with him to his hotel, close at hand, where he dashed me off this
+brief and rapid, but quite conclusive, Declaration, which, if you'll be
+so good as to read it, will enable you perhaps to join us in regarding
+the vexed question as settled."
+
+His lordship, having faced this speech without a sign, rested on the
+speaker a somewhat more confessed intelligence, then looked hard at
+the offered note and hard at the floor--all to avert himself actively
+afterward and, with his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance,
+as it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on
+his attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his
+companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His
+daughter none the less lifted her voice. "If you won't take what he has
+for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?" And then as
+after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, "It may be
+so long again," she said, "before you've a chance to do a thing I ask."
+
+"The chance will depend on yourself!" he returned with high dry
+emphasis. But he held out his hand for the note Hugh had given her and
+with which she approached him; and though face to face they seemed more
+separated than brought near by this contact without commerce. She turned
+away on one side when he had taken the missive, as Hugh had turned away
+on the other; Lord Theign drew forth the contents of the envelope and
+broodingly and inexpressively read the few lines; after which, as having
+done justice to their sense, he thrust the paper forth again till his
+daughter became aware and received it. She restored it to her friend
+while her father dandled off anew, but coming round this time, almost as
+by a circuit of the room, and meeting Hugh, who took advantage of it to
+repeat by a frank gesture his offer of Bardi's attestation. Lord Theign
+passed with the young man on this a couple of mute minutes of the same
+order as those he had passed with Lady Grace in the same connection;
+their eyes dealt deeply with their eyes--but to the effect of his
+lordship's accepting the gift, which after another minute he had slipped
+into his breast-pocket. It was not till then that he brought out a curt
+but resonant "Thank you!" While the others awaited his further pleasure
+he again bethought himself--then he addressed Lady Grace. "I must let
+Mr. Bender know----"
+
+"Mr. Bender," Hugh interposed, "does know. He's at the present moment
+with the author of that note at Long's Hotel."
+
+"Then I must now write him"--and his lordship, while he spoke and from
+where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.
+
+"Will you write _there?_"--and his daughter indicated Lady Sandgate's
+desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.
+
+Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his
+view on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so
+tiresome a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and
+had reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display
+of some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp "Hallo!"
+
+"You don't find things?" Lady Grace asked--as remote from him in one
+quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.
+
+"On the contrary!" he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any
+further surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an
+envelope, which he addressed and brought away.
+
+"If you like," said Hugh urbanely, "I'll carry him that myself."
+
+"But how do you know what it consists of?"
+
+"I don't know. But I risk it."
+
+His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner--he
+even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the
+finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself
+of any measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the
+interesting object, to redeem his offer of service. "Then you'll learn,"
+he simply said.
+
+"And may _I_ learn?" asked Lady Grace.
+
+"You?" The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.
+
+"May I go _with_ him?"
+
+Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme
+bitterness--a nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were
+familiar, but before which their first movement was always tightly to
+close. "_With_ me, my lord," said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined
+they should open and intensifying the emphasis.
+
+He had his effect, and Lord Theign's answer, addressed to Lady Grace,
+made indifference very comprehensive. "You may do what ever you
+dreadfully like!"
+
+At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as
+absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open
+for her.
+
+Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her
+expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have
+preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could
+yet find inspiration too in the very difficulty and the old faiths
+themselves that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth
+and beauty in her serious young face--as it had indeed a force that,
+not indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for
+longer exposure to. His shift of his attitude before she went out was
+fairly an evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter's
+made him afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a
+fear of the other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace passes from
+us at any rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale
+concentration--leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on
+the door.
+
+"You thanked me just now for Bardi's opinion after all," Hugh said with
+a smile; "and it seems to me that--after all as well--I've grounds for
+thanking you!" On which he left his benefactor alone.
+
+"Tit for tat!" There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the
+young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served
+his turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to
+the piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it
+again the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally
+recognise as Mr. Bender's forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising
+value he now studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing
+from him an articulate "What in damnation--?" His speculation dropped
+before the return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room
+fell upon his ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque
+into his waistcoat.
+
+Lady Sandgate appeared now in due--that is in the most happily
+adjusted--splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter
+and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, "Tea will be
+downstairs," she said. "But you're alone?"
+
+"I've just parted," her friend replied, "with Grace and Mr. Crimble."
+
+"'Parted' with them?"--the ambiguity struck her.
+
+"Well, they've gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!"
+
+"You speak," she laughed, "as if it were too gross--I They're surely
+coming back?"
+
+"Back to you, if you like--but not to me."
+
+"Ah, what are you and I," she tenderly argued, "but one and the same
+quantity? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in--well,
+whatever they're doing," she cheerfully added, "you'll get beautifully
+used to it."
+
+"That's just what I'm afraid of--what such horrid matters make of one!"
+
+"At the worst then, you see"--she maintained her optimism--"the
+recipient of royal attentions!"
+
+"Oh," said her companion, whom his honour seemed to leave comparatively
+cold, "it's simply as if the gracious Personage were coming to condole!"
+
+Impatient of the lapse of time, in any case, she assured herself again
+of the hour. "Well, if he only does come!"
+
+"John--the wretch!" Lord Theign returned--"will take care of that: he
+has nailed him and will bring him."
+
+"What was it then," his friend found occasion in the particular tone of
+this reference to demand, "what was it that, when you sent him off, John
+spoke of you in Bond Street as specifically intending?"
+
+Oh he saw it now all lucidly--if not rather luridly--and thereby
+the more tragically. "He described me in his nasty rage as
+consistently--well, heroic!"
+
+"His rage"--she pieced it sympathetically out--"at your destroying his
+cherished credit with Bender?"
+
+Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of
+it. "I had come between him and some profit that he doesn't confess to,
+but that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he
+caught the chance, to the Prince--and the People!"
+
+She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception
+of it. "By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People
+the picture--?"
+
+"As a sacrifice--yes!--to morbid, though respectable scruples." To which
+he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene: "But I
+hope you've nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?"
+
+Lady Sandgate waited--then boldly took her line. "None whatever! You had
+reacted against Bender--but you hadn't gone so far as _that!_"
+
+He had it now all vividly before him. "I had reacted--like a gentleman;
+but it didn't thereby follow that I acted--or spoke--like a demagogue;
+and my mind's a complete blank on the subject of my having done so."
+
+"So that there only flushes through your conscience," she suggested,
+"the fact that he has forced your hand?"
+
+Fevered with the sore sense of it his lordship wiped his brow. "He has
+played me, for spite, his damned impertinent trick!"
+
+She found but after a minute--for it wasn't easy--the right word, or the
+least wrong, for the situation. "Well, even if he did so diabolically
+commit you, you still don't want--do you?--to back out?"
+
+Resenting the suggestion, which restored all his nobler form, Lord
+Theign fairly drew himself up. "When did I ever in all my life back
+out?"
+
+"Never, never in all your life of course!"--she dashed a bucketful at
+the flare. "And the picture after all----!"
+
+"The picture after all"--he took her up in cold grim gallant
+despair--"has just been pronounced definitely priceless." And then
+to meet her gaping ignorance: "By Mr. Crimble's latest and apparently
+greatest adviser, who strongly stamps it a Mantovano and whose practical
+affidavit I now possess."
+
+Poor Lady Sandgate gaped but the more--she wondered and yearned.
+"Definitely priceless?"
+
+"Definitely priceless." After which he took from its place of lurking,
+considerately unfolding it, the goodly slip he had removed from her
+blotting-book. "Worth even more therefore than what Bender so blatantly
+offers."
+
+Her attention fell with interest, from the distance at which she
+stood, on this confirmatory document, her recognition of which was not
+immediate. "And is that the affidavit?"
+
+"This is a cheque to your order, my lady, for ten thousand pounds."
+
+"Ten thousand?"--she echoed it with a shout.
+
+"Drawn by some hand unknown," he went on quietly.
+
+"Unknown?"--again, in her muffled joy, she let it sound out.
+
+"Which I found there at your desk a moment ago, and thought best, in
+your interest, to rescue from accident or neglect; even though it be,
+save for the single stroke of a name begun," he wound up with his look
+like a playing searchlight, "unhappily unsigned."
+
+"Unsigned?"--the exhibition of her design, of her defeat, kept shaking
+her. "Then it isn't good--?"
+
+"It's a Barmecide feast, my dear!"--he had still, her kind friend, his
+note of grimness and also his penetration of eye. "But who is it writes
+you colossal cheques?"
+
+"And then leaves them lying about?" Her case was so bad that you
+would have seen how she felt she must _do_ something--something quite
+splendid. She recovered herself, she faced the situation with all her
+bright bravery of expression and aspect; conscious, you might have
+guessed, that she had never more strikingly embodied, on such lines, the
+elegant, the beautiful and the true. "Why, who can it have been but poor
+Breckenridge too?"
+
+"'Breckenridge'--?" Lord Theign had _his_ smart echoes. "What in the
+world does he owe you money for?"
+
+It took her but an instant more--she performed the great repudiation
+quite as she might be prepared to sweep, in the Presence impending,
+her grandest curtsey. "_Not_, you sweet suspicious thing, for my
+great-grandmother!" And then as his glare didn't fade: "Bender makes my
+life a burden--for the love of my precious Lawrence."
+
+"Which you're weakly letting him grab?"--nothing could have been
+finer with this than Lord Theign's reprobation unless it had been his
+surprise.
+
+She shook her head as in bland compassion for such an idea. "It isn't
+a payment, you goose--it's a bribe! I've withstood him, these trying
+weeks, as a rock the tempest; but he wrote that and left it there, the
+fiend, to tempt me--to corrupt me!"
+
+"Without putting his name?"--her companion again turned over the cheque.
+
+She bethought herself, clearly with all her genius, as to this anomaly,
+and the light of reality broke. "He must have been interrupted in the
+artful act--he sprang up with such a bound at Mr. Crimble's news. At
+once then--for his interest in it--he hurried off, leaving the cheque
+forgotten and unfinished." She smiled more intensely, her eyes attached,
+as from fascination, to the morsel of paper still handled by her friend.
+"But of course on his next visit he'll _add_ his great signature."
+
+"The devil he will!"--and Lord Theign, with the highest spirit, tore the
+crisp token into several pieces, which fluttered, as worthless now as
+pure snowflakes, to the floor.
+
+"Ay, ay, ay!"--it drew from her a wail of which the character, for its
+sharp inconsequence, was yet comic.
+
+This renewed his stare at her. "Do _you_ want to back out? I mean from
+your noble stand."
+
+As quickly, however, she had saved herself. "I'd rather do even what
+you're doing--offer my treasure to the Thingumbob!"
+
+He was touched by this even to sympathy. "Will you then _join_ me in
+setting the example of a great donation------?"
+
+"To the What-do-you-call-it?" she extravagantly smiled.
+
+"I call it," he said with dignity, "the 'National Gallery.'"
+
+She closed her eyes as with a failure of breath. "Ah my dear friend--!"
+
+"It would convince me," he went on, insistent and persuasive.
+
+"Of the sincerity of my affection?"--she drew nearer to him.
+
+"It would comfort me"--he was satisfied with his own expression. Yet
+in a moment, when she had come all rustlingly and fragrantly close, "It
+would captivate me," he handsomely added.
+
+"It would captivate you?" It was for _her_, we should have seen, to be
+satisfied with his expression; and, with our more informed observation
+of all it was a question of her giving up, she would have struck us as
+subtly bargaining.
+
+He gallantly amplified. "It would peculiarly--by which I mean it would
+so naturally--unite us!"
+
+Well, that was all she wanted. "Then for a complete union with you--of
+fact as well as of fond fancy!" she smiled--"there's nothing, even to my
+one ewe lamb, I'm not ready to surrender."
+
+"Ah, we don't surrender," he urged--"we enjoy!"
+
+"Yes," she understood: "with the glory of our grand gift thrown in."
+
+"We quite swagger," he gravely observed--"though even swaggering would
+after this be dull without you."
+
+"Oh, I'll _swagger_ with you!" she cried as if it quite settled and made
+up for everything; and then impatiently, as she beheld Lord John, whom
+the door had burst open to admit: "The Prince?"
+
+"The Prince!"--the young man launched it as a call to arms.
+
+They had fallen apart on the irruption, the pair discovered, but she
+flashed straight at her lover: "Then we can swagger now!"
+
+Lord Theign had reached the open door. "I meet him below."
+
+Demurring, debating, however, she stayed him a moment. "But oughtn't
+I--in my own house?"
+
+His lordship caught her meaning. "You mean he may think--?" But he as
+easily pronounced. "He shall think the Truth!" And with a kiss of his
+hand to her he was gone.
+
+Lord John, who had gazed in some wonder at these demonstrations, was
+quickly about to follow, but she checked him with an authority she
+had never before used and which was clearly the next moment to prove
+irresistible. "Lord John, be so good as to stop." Looking about at the
+condition of a room on the point of receiving so august a character,
+she observed on the floor the fragments of the torn cheque, to which she
+sharply pointed. "And please pick up that litter!"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
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+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Outcry, by Henry James
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Outcry
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21969]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTCRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE OUTCRY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Henry James <br /> <br /> <br /> 1911
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> BOOK FIRST </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> BOOK SECOND </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> BOOK THIRD </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK FIRST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NO, my lord,&rdquo; Banks had replied, &ldquo;no stranger has yet arrived. But I&rsquo;ll
+      see if any one has come in&mdash;or who has.&rdquo; As he spoke, however, he
+      observed Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s approach to the hall by the entrance giving upon
+      the great terrace, and addressed her on her passing the threshold. &ldquo;Lord
+      John, my lady.&rdquo; With which, his duty majestically performed, he retired to
+      the quarter&mdash;that of the main access to the spacious centre of the
+      house&mdash;from which he had ushered the visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This personage, facing Lady Sandgate as she paused there a moment framed
+      by the large doorway to the outer expanses, the small pinkish paper of a
+      folded telegram in her hand, had partly before him, as an immediate
+      effect, the high wide interior, still breathing the quiet air and the fair
+      pannelled security of the couple of hushed and stored centuries, in which
+      certain of the reputed treasures of Dedborough Place beautifully disposed
+      themselves; and then, through ample apertures and beyond the stately stone
+      outworks of the great seated and supported house&mdash;uplifting terrace,
+      balanced, balustraded steps and containing basins where splash and spray
+      were at rest&mdash;all the rich composed extension of garden and lawn and
+      park. An ancient, an assured elegance seemed to reign; pictures and
+      preserved &ldquo;pieces,&rdquo; cabinets and tapestries, spoke, each for itself, of
+      fine selection and high distinction; while the originals of the old
+      portraits, in more or less deserved salience, hung over the happy scene as
+      the sworn members of a great guild might have sat, on the beautiful April
+      day, at one of their annual feasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman of
+      considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided with
+      that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such complacent
+      company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists and turns of
+      history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue or easy
+      sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no point more
+      so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane future
+      certain to be more and more offensive to women of real quality and of
+      formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue to the antique
+      confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, had given way to
+      curiosity&mdash;that is to speculation&mdash;however disguised. She might
+      have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid, but she
+      would presumably have confessed, if put on her trial for restlessness or
+      for intelligence, that she <i>was</i>, after all, almost clever enough to
+      be vulgar. Unmistakably, moreover, she had still, with her fine stature,
+      her disciplined figure, her cherished complexion, her bright important
+      hair, her kind bold eyes and her large constant smile, the degree of
+      beauty that might pretend to put every other question by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John addressed her as with a significant manner that he might have
+      had&mdash;that of a lack of need, or even of interest, for any explanation
+      about herself: it would have been clear that he was apt to discriminate
+      with sharpness among possible claims on his attention. &ldquo;I luckily find <i>you</i>
+      at least, Lady Sandgate&mdash;they tell me Theign&rsquo;s off somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She replied as with the general habit, on her side, of bland reassurance;
+      it mostly had easier consequences&mdash;for herself&mdash;than the perhaps
+      more showy creation of alarm. &ldquo;Only off in the park&mdash;open to-day for
+      a school-feast from Dedborough, as you may have made out from the avenue;
+      giving good advice, at the top of his lungs, to four hundred and fifty
+      children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such a scene, and such an aspect of the personage so accounted for,
+      as Lord John could easily take in, and his recognition familiarly smiled.
+      &ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s so great on such occasions that I&rsquo;m sorry to be missing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve <i>had</i> to miss it,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate sighed&mdash;&ldquo;that is to miss
+      the peroration. I&rsquo;ve just left them, but he had even then been going on
+      for twenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you&rsquo;ll
+      find him, poor dear victim of duty, still <i>at</i> it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll warrant&mdash;for, as I often tell him, he makes the idea of one&rsquo;s
+      duty an awful thing to his friends by the extravagance with which he
+      always overdoes it.&rdquo; And the image itself appeared in some degree to
+      prompt this particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider.
+      &ldquo;I should like to come in for the grand <i>finale</i>, but I rattled over
+      in a great measure to meet a party, as he calls himself&mdash;and calls,
+      if you please, even me!&mdash;who&rsquo;s motoring down by appointment and whom
+      I think I should be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in
+      the hope of a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can imagine it perfectly,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently no
+      perceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. &ldquo;It quite sticks out
+      of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waiting to see.
+      But you haven&rsquo;t then,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;come from town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly
+      lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no longer than
+      was decent. &ldquo;But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her preference, just
+      settling down to bridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day gets
+      up&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which the Duchess never does?&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sand-gate only asked to be
+      allowed to show how she saw it. &ldquo;She fights to the last, invincible;
+      gathering in the spoils and only routing her friends?&rdquo; She abounded
+      genially in her privileged vision. &ldquo;Ah yes&mdash;we know something of
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye, fixed
+      her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion.
+      &ldquo;You too then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She wouldn&rsquo;t, however, too meanly narrow it down. &ldquo;Well, in this house
+      generally; where I&rsquo;m so often made welcome, you see, and where&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where,&rdquo; he broke in at once, &ldquo;your jolly good footing quite sticks out of
+      <i>you</i>, perhaps you&rsquo;ll let me say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clearly didn&rsquo;t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal
+      with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only
+      decide to deal quite simply. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t say more than I feel&mdash;and am
+      proud to feel!&mdash;at being of comfort when they&rsquo;re worried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This but fed the light flame of his easy perception&mdash;which lighted
+      for him, if she would, all the facts equally. &ldquo;And they&rsquo;re worried now,
+      you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of
+      making a great noise if she isn&rsquo;t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that
+      truth,&rdquo; he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of
+      delicacy; &ldquo;but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a
+      bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. &ldquo;Because poor Kitty Imber&mdash;who
+      should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as
+      I&rsquo;ve had to, goodness knows!&mdash;has thrown herself, with her impossible
+      big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to &lsquo;look to&rsquo; 
+      even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly
+      did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing
+      to the note of free inquiry in Lord John&rsquo;s reply. &ldquo;You mean that our
+      lovely young widows&mdash;to say nothing of lovely young wives&mdash;ought
+      by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after
+      a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. &ldquo;Well,
+      in that set&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother&rsquo;s set?&rdquo; However, if she could smile he could laugh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much
+      obliged!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she qualified, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t criticise her Grace; but the ways and
+      traditions and tone of this house&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it&rdquo;&mdash;he took her sense straight from her&mdash;&ldquo;the house in
+      England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt
+      elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts&mdash;to say
+      nothing of others!&mdash;and wishing to have at least those wiped out in
+      the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,&rdquo; he went on before she could
+      meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; &ldquo;and just that, I assure you, is a
+      large part of the reason I like to come here&mdash;since I personally
+      don&rsquo;t come with any such associations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the association of bankruptcy&mdash;no; as you represent the payee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a
+      liberty taken. &ldquo;How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bethought herself&mdash;but briefly and bravely. &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you
+      represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don&rsquo;t you
+      represent the belief&mdash;very natural, I grant&mdash;that more than <i>one</i>
+      perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy
+      old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our
+      admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending
+      yourself to dear Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent
+      infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing his
+      chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough on some
+      felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck, the
+      strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with the young
+      woman to whom our friends&rsquo; reference thus broadened still a vague quantity
+      for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quite possible&mdash;and
+      this despite an odd element in him that you might have described as a
+      certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son of a noble matron
+      recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed in no immediate or
+      aggressive manner any imputable private heritage or privilege of
+      arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiated fineness if his lustre
+      hadn&rsquo;t been a little prematurely dimmed. Active yet insubstantial, he was
+      slight and short and a trifle too punctually, though not yet quite
+      lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his eyebrow, the finish of
+      his facial line, the economy of &ldquo;treatment&rdquo; by which his negative nose had
+      been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had pleasant but hard little eyes&mdash;they glittered, handsomely,
+      without promise&mdash;and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear
+      instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and
+      immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at
+      a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air
+      which still suggested sharp wants&mdash;and this was withal the ambiguity;
+      for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have
+      concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for
+      instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in
+      it would scarce have been considerately irritable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask what you mean,&rdquo; he inquired of Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;by the question
+      of my &lsquo;arranging&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that you&rsquo;re the very clever son of a very clever mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m less clever than you think,&rdquo; he replied&mdash;&ldquo;if you really
+      think it of me at all; and mamma&rsquo;s a good sight cleverer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than I think?&rdquo; Lady Sandgate echoed. &ldquo;Why, she&rsquo;s the person in all our
+      world I would gladly most resemble&mdash;for her general ability to put
+      what she wants through.&rdquo; But she at once added: &ldquo;That is <i>if</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       pausing on it with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If what then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of
+      cleverness without exception&mdash;and to have them,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate,
+      &ldquo;to the very end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. &ldquo;The very
+      end of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be,
+      and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. &ldquo;Say of her so
+      wonderfully successful <i>general</i> career.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations
+      short. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re as clever as she you&rsquo;ll be as good.&rdquo; To which he
+      subjoined: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good
+      she is.&rdquo; This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might
+      appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take&mdash;he was so
+      prompt with a more explicit challenge. &ldquo;What is it exactly that you
+      suppose yourself to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to
+      take everything. &ldquo;I always proceed on the assumption that I know
+      everything, because that makes people tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t make we,&rdquo; he quite rang out, &ldquo;if I didn&rsquo;t want to! But as it
+      happens,&rdquo; he allowed, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a question it would be convenient to me to
+      put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with
+      him, extremely in Theign&rsquo;s confidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited a little as for more. &ldquo;Is that your question&mdash;<i>whether</i>
+      I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but if you are you&rsquo;ll the better answer it&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re the best
+      friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman
+      with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as
+      so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I&rsquo;m happy to
+      say that&mdash;for my pleasure when I&rsquo;m really curious&mdash;this doesn&rsquo;t
+      close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I hope you&rsquo;ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about
+      it he&rsquo;s likely to listen to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate measured her ground&mdash;which scarce seemed extensive.
+      &ldquo;The person he most listens to just now&mdash;and in fact at any time, as
+      you must have seen for yourself&mdash;is that arch-tormentor, or at least
+      beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Imber&rsquo;s <i>here?</i>&rdquo; Lord John alertly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She arrived last night and&mdash;as we&rsquo;ve other visitors&mdash;seems to
+      have set up a side-show in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she&rsquo;ll &lsquo;draw&rsquo; of course immensely, as she always does. But her
+      sister won&rsquo;t be in that case with her,&rdquo; the young man supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well
+      may,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;but I must tell you that when I last noticed
+      them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John figured it a moment. &ldquo;Lady Imber&rdquo;&mdash;he ironically enlarged
+      the figure&mdash;&ldquo;<i>can</i> lead people away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear Grace,&rdquo; his companion returned, &ldquo;happens fortunately to be
+      firm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. &ldquo;Not against <i>me</i>,
+      however&mdash;you don&rsquo;t mean? You don&rsquo;t think she has a beastly prejudice&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may&mdash;or what
+      mayn&rsquo;t&mdash;have happened between you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I try to judge&rdquo;&mdash;and such candour as was possible to Lord John
+      seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m in fear of seeing her too
+      much as I want to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet
+      &ldquo;Are you absolutely in earnest about her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I am&mdash;why shouldn&rsquo;t I be? But,&rdquo; he said with impatience,
+      &ldquo;I want help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, that&rsquo;s what Lady Imber&rsquo;s giving you.&rdquo; And as it appeared
+      to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced
+      others, and so far did help him&mdash;though the effort was in a degree
+      that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of
+      stray signs and shy lights. &ldquo;By telling her, by bringing it home to her,
+      that if she&rsquo;ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the
+      handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet
+      regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. &ldquo;Well,
+      and by <i>me</i>.&rdquo; To which he added with more of a challenge in it: &ldquo;But
+      you really know what my mother will do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By my system,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate smiled, &ldquo;you see I&rsquo;ve guessed. What your
+      mother will do is what brought you over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s that,&rdquo; he allowed&mdash;&ldquo;and something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something else?&rdquo; she derisively echoed. &ldquo;I should think &lsquo;that,&rsquo; for an
+      ardent lover, would have been enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but it&rsquo;s all one Job! I mean it&rsquo;s one idea,&rdquo; he hastened to explain&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      you think Lady Imber&rsquo;s really acting on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mightn&rsquo;t you go and see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would in a moment if I hadn&rsquo;t to look out for another matter too.&rdquo; And
+      he renewed his attention to his watch. &ldquo;I mean getting straight at my
+      American, the party I just mentioned&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she had already taken him up. &ldquo;You too have an American and a &lsquo;party,&rsquo; 
+      and yours also motors down&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Breckenridge Bender.&rdquo; Lord John named him with a shade of elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gaped at the fuller light &ldquo;You <i>know</i> my Breckenridge?&mdash;who
+      I hoped was coming for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. &ldquo;Had he told you so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since
+      her entrance. &ldquo;He has sent me that&mdash;which, delivered to me ten
+      minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man read out this missive. &ldquo;&lsquo;Failing to find you in Bruton
+      Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.&rsquo;&rdquo; It did
+      involve an ambiguity. &ldquo;Why, he has been engaged these three days to
+      coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich
+      scene. &ldquo;Then why does he say it&rsquo;s me he&rsquo;s pursuing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced
+      monopoly. &ldquo;My dear lady, he&rsquo;s pursuing expensive works of art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By which you imply that I&rsquo;m one?&rdquo; She might have been wound up by her
+      disappointment to almost any irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imply&mdash;or rather I affirm&mdash;that every handsome woman is! But
+      what he arranged with me about,&rdquo; Lord John explained, &ldquo;was that he should
+      see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in
+      particular&mdash;of which he had heard so much and to which I&rsquo;ve been thus
+      glad to assist him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener&rsquo;s
+      mystification. &ldquo;Then why&mdash;this whole week that I&rsquo;ve been in the house&mdash;hasn&rsquo;t
+      our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because our good friend here has had no reason&rdquo;&mdash;Lord John could
+      treat it now as simple enough. &ldquo;Good as he is in all ways, he&rsquo;s so best of
+      all about showing the house and its contents that I haven&rsquo;t even thought
+      necessary to write him that I&rsquo;m introducing Breckenridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have been happy to introduce him,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate just quavered&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      I had at all known he wanted it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to
+      pronounce it a trifle he didn&rsquo;t care a fig for. &ldquo;I surrender you that
+      privilege then&mdash;of presenting him to his host&mdash;if I&rsquo;ve seemed to
+      you to snatch it from you.&rdquo; To which Lord John added, as with liberality
+      unrestricted, &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve been taking him about to see what&rsquo;s worth while&mdash;as
+      only last week to Lady Lappington&rsquo;s Longhi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady
+      Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. &ldquo;Her Longhi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you know her great Venetian family group, the
+      What-do-you-call-&rsquo;ems?&mdash;seven full-length figures, each one a gem,
+      for which he paid her her price before he left the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could but make it more richly resound&mdash;almost stricken, lost in
+      her wistful thought: &ldquo;Seven full-length figures? Her price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight thousand&mdash;slap down. Bender knows,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;what he
+      wants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does he want only&rdquo;&mdash;her wonder grew and grew&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What-do-you-call-&rsquo;ems&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He most usually wants what he can&rsquo;t have.&rdquo; Lord John made scarce more of
+      it than that. &ldquo;But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went
+      <i>at</i> him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. &ldquo;How horrible&mdash;at
+      the rate things are leaving us!&rdquo; But this was far from the end of her
+      interest. &ldquo;And is that the way he pays?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before he leaves the house?&rdquo; Lord John lived it amusedly over. &ldquo;Well, <i>she</i>
+      took care of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How incredibly vulgar!&rdquo; It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still
+      other connections&mdash;which might have attenuated Lady Lappington&rsquo;s
+      case, though she didn&rsquo;t glance at this. &ldquo;He makes the most scandalous eyes&mdash;the
+      ruffian!&mdash;at my great-grandmother.&rdquo; And then as richly to enlighten
+      any blankness: &ldquo;My tremendous Lawrence, don&rsquo;t you know?&mdash;in her
+      wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes,
+      such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally
+      considered the masterpiece of the artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in
+      which he wasn&rsquo;t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it.
+      &ldquo;And are you going to <i>sell</i> the masterpiece of the artist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held her head high. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve indignantly refused&mdash;for all his
+      pressing me so hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet that&rsquo;s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I need hardly fear it perhaps if&mdash;in
+      the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him&mdash;his
+      pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Lord John returned, &ldquo;he kills two birds with one stone&mdash;he sees
+      both Sir Joshua and you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair
+      associate. &ldquo;Does he want to buy <i>their</i> pride and glory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the
+      bright reflector of her thought. &ldquo;Is that wonder for sale?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. &ldquo;Not,
+      surely, by <i>any</i> monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t fancy him&mdash;no!&rdquo; And Lord John appeared to renounce the
+      effort. &ldquo;But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These things might be, Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s face and gesture apparently
+      signified; but another question diverted her. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re clearly a wonderful
+      showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you&rsquo;re on such an occasion
+      a&mdash;well, a closely interested one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Interested&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed; though it wasn&rsquo;t to gain time, he showed, for
+      he would in that case have taken more. &ldquo;To the extent, you mean, of my
+      little percentage?&rdquo; And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
+      smile on him: &ldquo;Why do you ask if&mdash;with your high delicacy about your
+      great-grandmother&mdash;you&rsquo;ve nothing to place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when she
+      spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared. &ldquo;I ask
+      because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to the&mdash;how
+      shall I name it?&mdash;the common weal; and because of my general strong
+      feeling that we don&rsquo;t want any more of our national treasures (for I
+      regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s much in this country and age,&rdquo; he replied in an off-hand manner,
+      &ldquo;to be said about <i>that</i>,&rdquo; The present, however, was not the time to
+      say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it with a
+      smile that signified sufficiency. &ldquo;To my friends, I need scarcely remark
+      to you, I&rsquo;m all the friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to the
+      terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this
+      functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy
+      interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as she
+      turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the friend then
+      clearly who&rsquo;s wanted in the park.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand a
+      missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her
+      companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where
+      she had left it. &ldquo;By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you&rsquo;ll join
+      them below the terrace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Grace hopes,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate for the young man&rsquo;s encouragement.
+      &ldquo;There you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. &ldquo;I rush to
+      Lady Grace, but don&rsquo;t demoralise Bender!&rdquo; And he went forth to the terrace
+      and the gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function.
+      &ldquo;Will you have tea, my lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeared to strike her as premature. &ldquo;Oh, thanks&mdash;when they all
+      come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll scarcely <i>all</i>, my lady&rdquo;&mdash;he indicated respectfully
+      that he knew what he was talking about. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s tea in her ladyship&rsquo;s
+      tent; but,&rdquo; he qualified, &ldquo;it has also been ordered for the saloon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; she said cheerfully, &ldquo;Mr. Bender will be glad&mdash;!&rdquo; And she
+      became, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banks
+      considered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by the
+      footman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. &ldquo;Here he
+      must be, my lady.&rdquo; With which he retired to the spacious opposite quarter,
+      where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed, retreated
+      as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, received the
+      many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord John&rsquo;s irritating
+      confidence and of Lady Lappington&rsquo;s massive cheque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both hands out,
+      she had at once gone on: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll of course have tea?&mdash;in the saloon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolve before
+      sounding. &ldquo;Why; the very first thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. &ldquo;Ah, have it the
+      last if you like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see your English teas&mdash;!&rdquo; he pleaded as he looked about him, so
+      immediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents that his
+      friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which he must
+      have swept Lady Lappington&rsquo;s inferior scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;re too much for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they&rsquo;re too many. I think I&rsquo;ve had two or three on the road&mdash;at
+      any rate my man did. I like to do business before&mdash;&rdquo; But his sequence
+      dropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She divertedly picked it up. &ldquo;Before tea, Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before everything, Lady Sandgate.&rdquo; He was immensely genial, but a queer,
+      quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safe&mdash;for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve <i>come</i> to do business?&rdquo; Her appeal and her emphasis
+      melted as into a caress&mdash;which, however, spent itself on his large
+      high person as he consented, with less of demonstration but more of
+      attention, to look down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by
+      an intenser note. &ldquo;To tell me you <i>will</i> treat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having received
+      benefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shone as
+      with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointed sanity
+      and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair of very ample
+      wings&mdash;wide pinions for the present conveniently folded, but that he
+      would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spread for great
+      flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable, even a
+      worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had not the
+      affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular. Fortune,
+      felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at his cradle-side&mdash;whatever
+      the ministering power might have been&mdash;had simply overlooked and
+      neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showed not so much for
+      perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neither formed nor
+      fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have been done for it but
+      what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush and the looking-glass could
+      officiously do; it had in short resisted any possibly finer attrition at
+      the hands of fifty years of offered experience. It had developed on the
+      lines, if lines they could be called, of the mere scoured and polished and
+      initialled &ldquo;mug&rdquo; rather than to any effect of a composed physiognomy;
+      though we must at the same time add that its wearer carried this
+      featureless disk as with the warranted confidence that might have attended
+      a warning headlight or a glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named
+      it, showed you at least where he was, and most often that he was straight
+      upon you. It was fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance
+      that Lady Sandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that
+      he soon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. &ldquo;For your
+      grandmother, Lady Sandgate?&rdquo; he then returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For my grandmother&rsquo;s <i>mother</i>, Mr. Bender&mdash;the most beautiful
+      woman of her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as
+      you quite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender bethought himself further&mdash;yet drawing it out; as if the
+      familiar fact of his being &ldquo;made up to&rdquo; had never had such special
+      softness and warmth of pressure. &ldquo;Do you want very, <i>very</i> much&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had already caught him up. &ldquo;&lsquo;Very, very much&rsquo; for her? Well, Mr.
+      Bender,&rdquo; she smilingly replied, &ldquo;I think I should like her full value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean&rdquo;&mdash;he kindly discriminated&mdash;&ldquo;do you want so badly to work
+      her off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be an intense convenience to me&mdash;so much so that your
+      telegram made me at once fondly hope you&rsquo;d be arriving to conclude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was the mere
+      frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient range
+      elsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kind
+      even while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one of the
+      several, the famous Dedborough pictures&mdash;stray specimens, by every
+      presumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. &ldquo;&lsquo;Conclude&rsquo;?&rdquo; he
+      echoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. &ldquo;You ladies want to
+      get there before the road&rsquo;s so much as laid or the country&rsquo;s safe! Do you
+      know what this <i>here</i> is?&rdquo; he at once went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you can&rsquo;t have <i>that!</i>&rdquo; she cried as with full authority&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      you must really understand that you can&rsquo;t have everything. You mustn&rsquo;t
+      expect to ravage Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. &ldquo;I guess it&rsquo;s a bogus Cuyp&mdash;but
+      I know Lord Theign <i>has</i> things. He won&rsquo;t do business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not in the least, and can never be, in my tight place,&rdquo; Lady
+      Sandgate replied; &ldquo;but he&rsquo;s as proud as he&rsquo;s kind, dear man, and as solid
+      as he&rsquo;s proud; so that if you came down under a different impression&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       Well, she could only exhale the folly of his error with an unction that
+      represented, whatever he might think of it, all her competence to answer
+      for their host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scarce thought of it enough, on any side, however, to be diverted from
+      prior dispositions. &ldquo;I came on an understanding that I should find my
+      friend Lord John, and that Lord Theign would, on his introduction, kindly
+      let me look round. But being before lunch in Bruton Street I knocked at
+      your door&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For another look,&rdquo; she quickly interposed, &ldquo;at my Lawrence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For another look at <i>you</i>, Lady Sandgate&mdash;your
+      great-grandmother wasn&rsquo;t required. Informed you were here, and struck with
+      the coincidence of my being myself presently due,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I
+      despatched you my wire, on coming away, just to keep up your spirits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>don&rsquo;t</i> keep them up, you depress them to anguish,&rdquo; she almost
+      passionately protested, &ldquo;when you don&rsquo;t tell me you&rsquo;ll treat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused in his preoccupation, his perambulation, conscious evidently of
+      no reluctance that was worth a scene with so charming and so hungry a
+      woman. &ldquo;Well, if it&rsquo;s a question of your otherwise suffering torments, may
+      I have another interview with the old lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Mr. Bender, she&rsquo;s in the flower of her youth; she only yearns for
+      interviews, and you may have,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate earnestly declared, &ldquo;as many
+      as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you must be there to protect me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then as soon as I return&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;&mdash;it clearly cost him little to say&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come right
+      round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She joyously registered the vow. &ldquo;Only meanwhile then, please, never a
+      word!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never a word, certainly. But where all this time,&rdquo; Mr. Bender asked, &ldquo;is
+      Lord John?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a young woman
+      who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorway to the
+      terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature and simply
+      dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade of a large hat
+      surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyes had vaguely
+      questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to the gentleman
+      forming the subject of their inquiry: &ldquo;Lady Grace must know.&rdquo; At this the
+      young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced the visitor. &ldquo;My
+      dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation, but
+      she had urbanity to spare. &ldquo;Of whom Lord John has told me,&rdquo; she returned,
+      &ldquo;and whom I&rsquo;m glad to see. Lord John,&rdquo; she explained to his waiting
+      friend, &ldquo;is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big Temperance
+      school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if you care to
+      go out&mdash;!&rdquo; She gave him in fine his choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn&rsquo;t
+      the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his
+      prudence. &ldquo;Are there any pictures in the park?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace&rsquo;s facial response represented less humour perhaps, but more
+      play. &ldquo;We find our park itself rather a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s own levity at any rate persisted. &ldquo;With a big Temperance
+      school-feast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s a great judge of pictures,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate said as to
+      forestall any impression of excessive freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will there be more tea?&rdquo; he pursued, almost presuming on this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;ll
+      be plenty of tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. &ldquo;Well, Lady Grace, I&rsquo;m after
+      pictures, but I take them &lsquo;neat.&rsquo; May I go right round here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, love,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate at once said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll let me show him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A moment, dear&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Grace gently demurred. &ldquo;Do go round,&rdquo; she
+      conformably added to Mr. Bender; &ldquo;take your ease and your time.
+      Everything&rsquo;s open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,
+      you&rsquo;ll have the place to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be in clover&mdash;sure!&rdquo;
+       But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture, which he could
+      fluently enough name. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll find &lsquo;The Beautiful Duchess of
+      Waterbridge&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the
+      quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. &ldquo;At the very
+      end of <i>those</i> rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had wide eyes for the vista. &ldquo;About thirty in a row, hey?&rdquo; And he was
+      already off. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll work right through!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. &ldquo;Lord John warned
+      me he was &lsquo;funny&rsquo;&mdash;but you already know him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There might have been a sense of embarrassment in the way in which, as to
+      gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the small
+      picture pronounced upon by Mr. Bender. &ldquo;He thinks your little Cuyp a
+      fraud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That one?&rdquo; Lady Grace could but stare. &ldquo;The wretch!&rdquo; However, she made,
+      without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous question.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve met him before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a little&mdash;in town. Being &lsquo;after pictures&rsquo;&rdquo; Lady Sandgate
+      explained, &ldquo;he has been after my great-grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She,&rdquo; said Lady Grace with amusement, &ldquo;must have found him funny! But he
+      can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord John, and
+      while you, if you&rsquo;ll be so good, go back to support father&mdash;in the
+      hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that he
+      complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as sneaking
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. &ldquo;I delight in his
+      triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it&rsquo;s a question
+      of support, aren&rsquo;t you yourself failing him quite as much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had, however, no effect on the girl&rsquo;s confidence. &ldquo;Ah, my dear, I&rsquo;m
+      not at all the same thing, and as I&rsquo;m the person in the world he least
+      misses&mdash;&rdquo; Well, such a fact spoke for itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been free to return and wait for Lord John?&rdquo;&mdash;that was the
+      sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as
+      speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though very
+      quietly, to correct her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not come back to wait for Lord John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he hasn&rsquo;t told you&mdash;if you&rsquo;ve talked&mdash;with what idea he
+      has come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.
+      &ldquo;Kitty has told me&mdash;what it suits her to pretend to suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Kitty&rsquo;s pretensions and suppositions always go with what happens&mdash;at
+      the moment, among all her wonderful happenings&mdash;to suit her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace let that question answer itself&mdash;she took the case up
+      further on. &ldquo;What I can&rsquo;t make out is why this <i>should</i> so suit her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what <i>I</i> can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and
+      turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless
+      presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. &ldquo;Do you like him
+      enough to risk the chance of Kitty&rsquo;s being for once right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace gave it a thought&mdash;with which she moved away. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      know how much I like him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor how little!&rdquo; cried her friend, who evidently found amusement in the
+      tone of it. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;re not disposed to take the time to find out? He&rsquo;s at
+      least better than the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The &lsquo;others&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Grace was blank for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others of his set.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, his set! That wouldn&rsquo;t be difficult&mdash;by what I imagine of some
+      of them. But he means well enough,&rdquo; the girl added; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s very charming
+      and does me great honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief arrest.
+      &ldquo;Then may I tell your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the subject.
+      &ldquo;Tell my father, please, that I&rsquo;m expecting Mr. Crimble; of whom I&rsquo;ve
+      spoken to him even if he doesn&rsquo;t remember, and who bicycles this afternoon
+      ten miles over from where he&rsquo;s staying&mdash;with some people we don&rsquo;t
+      know&mdash;to look at the pictures, about which he&rsquo;s awfully keen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate took it in. &ldquo;Ah, like Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought &ldquo;May I ask
+      then&mdash;if one&rsquo;s to meet him&mdash;who he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father knows&mdash;or ought to&mdash;that I sat next him, in London,
+      a month ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and
+      nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of Connoisseurship&mdash;which
+      is upsetting, as perhaps you&rsquo;re not aware, all the old-fashioned canons of
+      art-criticism, everything we&rsquo;ve stupidly thought right and held dear; that
+      he was to spend Easter in these parts, and that he should like greatly to
+      be allowed some day to come over and make acquaintance with our things. I
+      told him,&rdquo; Lady Grace wound up, &ldquo;that nothing would be easier; a note from
+      him arrived before dinner&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate jumped the rest &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s for him you&rsquo;ve come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s for him I&rsquo;ve come in,&rdquo; the girl assented with serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good&mdash;though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first
+      just tell me <i>this</i>&mdash;whether when you sent in ten minutes ago
+      for Lord John to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?&rdquo; And
+      she followed it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. &ldquo;Was it
+      because you knew why he had arrived?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young friend hesitated still. &ldquo;&lsquo;Why &lsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So particularly to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since he was expected and mightn&rsquo;t know where I was,&rdquo; Lady Grace said
+      after an instant, &ldquo;I wanted naturally to be civil to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And had he time there to tell you,&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate asked, &ldquo;how very civil
+      he wants to be to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, only to tell me that his friend&mdash;who&rsquo;s off there&mdash;was
+      coming; for Kitty at once appropriated him and was still in possession
+      when I came away.&rdquo; Then, as deciding at last on perfect frankness, Lady
+      Grace went on: &ldquo;If you want to know, I sent for news of him because Kitty
+      insisted on my doing so; saying, so very oddly and quite in her own way,
+      that she herself didn&rsquo;t wish to &lsquo;appear in it.&rsquo; She had done nothing but
+      say to me for an hour, rather worryingly, what you&rsquo;ve just said&mdash;that
+      it&rsquo;s me he&rsquo;s what, like Mr. Bender, she calls &lsquo;after&rsquo;; but as soon as he
+      appeared she pounced on him, and I left him&mdash;I assure you quite
+      resignedly&mdash;in her hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wants&rdquo;&mdash;it was easy for Lady Sandgate to remark&mdash;&ldquo;to talk
+      of you to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know <i>what</i> she wants,&rdquo; the girl replied as with rather a
+      tired patience; &ldquo;Kitty wants so many things at once. She always wants
+      money, in quantities, to begin with&mdash;and all to throw so horribly
+      away; so that whenever I see her &lsquo;in&rsquo; so very deep with any one I always
+      imagine her appealing for some new tip as to how it&rsquo;s to be come by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitty&rsquo;s an abyss, I grant you, and with my disinterested devotion to your
+      father&mdash;in requital of all his kindness to me since Lord Sandgate&rsquo;s
+      death and since your mother&rsquo;s&mdash;I can never be too grateful to you, my
+      dear, for your being so different a creature. But what is she going to
+      gain financially,&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate pursued with a strong emphasis on her
+      adverb, &ldquo;by working up our friend&rsquo;s confidence in your listening to him&mdash;if
+      you <i>are</i> to listen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t in the least engaged to listen,&rdquo; said Lady Grace&mdash;&ldquo;it will
+      depend on the music he makes!&rdquo; But she added with light cynicism: &ldquo;Perhaps
+      she&rsquo;s to gain a commission!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On his fairly getting you?&rdquo; And then as the girl assented by silence: &ldquo;Is
+      he in a position to pay her one?&rdquo; Lady Sandgate asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say the Duchess is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you see the Duchess <i>producing</i> money&mdash;with all that
+      Kitty, as we&rsquo;re not ignorant, owes her? Hundreds and hundreds and
+      hundreds!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate piled them up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her young friend&rsquo;s gesture checked it. &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t tell me how many&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      too sad and too ugly and too wrong!&rdquo; To which, however, Lady Grace added:
+      &ldquo;But perhaps that will be just her way!&rdquo; And then as her companion seemed
+      for the moment not quite to follow: &ldquo;By letting Kitty off her debt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitty goes free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has her creditor&rsquo;s release?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For every shilling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he only fails?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why then of course,&rdquo; said now quite lucid Lady Grace, &ldquo;she throws herself
+      more than ever on poor father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor father indeed!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate richly sighed it
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but
+      he after all and in spite of everything adores her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the point, you mean&rdquo;&mdash;for Lady Sandgate could clearly but wonder&mdash;&ldquo;of
+      really sacrificing you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The weight of Lady Grace&rsquo;s charming deep eyes on her face made her pause
+      while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange
+      determined in the girl a grave appeal. &ldquo;You think I <i>should</i> be
+      sacrificed if I married him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly. &ldquo;<i>Could</i>
+      you marry him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace waited a moment &ldquo;Do you mean for Kitty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For himself even&mdash;if they should convince you, among them, that he
+      cares for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had another delay. &ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s his awful mother&rsquo;s son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but you wouldn&rsquo;t marry his mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately
+      conscious of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even when,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, &ldquo;she so markedly likes
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This determined in the girl a fine impatience. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;like&rsquo; me, she
+      only <i>wants</i> me&mdash;which is a very different thing; wants me for
+      my father&rsquo;s so particularly beautiful position, and my mother&rsquo;s so
+      supremely great people, and for everything we have been and have done, and
+      still are and still have: except of course poor not-at-all-model Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this luminous account of the matter Lady Sand-gate turned as to a
+      genial sun-burst. &ldquo;I see indeed&mdash;for the general immaculate
+      connection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words had no note of irony, but Lady Grace, in her great seriousness,
+      glanced with deprecation at the possibility. &ldquo;Well, we <i>haven&rsquo;t</i> had
+      false notes. We&rsquo;ve scarcely even had bad moments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;ve been beatific!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate enviously, quite
+      ruefully, felt it. But any further treatment of the question was checked
+      by the re-entrance of the footman&mdash;a demonstration explained by the
+      concomitant appearance of a young man in eyeglasses and with the ends of
+      his trousers clipped together as for cycling. &ldquo;This must be your friend,&rdquo;
+       she had only time to say to the daughter of the house; with which, alert
+      and reminded of how she was awaited elsewhere, she retreated before her
+      companion&rsquo;s visitor, who had come in with his guide from the vestibule.
+      She passed away to the terrace and the gardens, Mr. Hugh Crimble&rsquo;s
+      announced name ringing in her ears&mdash;to some effect that we are as yet
+      not qualified to discern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had turned to meet Mr. Hugh Crimble, whose pleasure in at once
+      finding her lighted his keen countenance and broke into easy words. &ldquo;So
+      awfully kind of you&mdash;in the midst of the great doings I noticed&mdash;to
+      have found a beautiful minute for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I left the great doings, which are almost over, to every one&rsquo;s relief, I
+      think,&rdquo; the girl returned, &ldquo;so that your precious time shouldn&rsquo;t be taken
+      to hunt for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clearly for him, on this bright answer, as if her white hand were
+      holding out the perfect flower of felicity. &ldquo;You came in from your revels
+      on purpose&mdash;with the same charity you showed me from that first
+      moment?&rdquo; They stood smiling at each other as in an exchange of sympathy
+      already confessed&mdash;and even as if finding that their relation had
+      grown during the lapse of contact; she recognising the effect of what they
+      had originally felt as bravely as he might name it. What the fine,
+      slightly long oval of her essentially quiet face&mdash;quiet in spite of
+      certain vague depths of reference to forces of the strong high order,
+      forces involved and implanted, yet also rather spent in the process&mdash;kept
+      in range from under her redundant black hat was the strength of
+      expression, the directness of communication, that her guest appeared to
+      borrow from the unframed and unattached nippers unceasingly perched, by
+      their mere ground-glass rims, as she remembered, on the bony bridge of his
+      indescribably authoritative (since it was at the same time decidedly
+      inquisitive) young nose. She must, however, also have embraced in this
+      contemplation, she must more or less again have interpreted, his main
+      physiognomic mark, the degree to which his clean jaw was underhung and his
+      lower lip protruded; a lapse of regularity made evident by a suppression
+      of beard and moustache as complete as that practised by Mr. Bender&mdash;though
+      without the appearance consequent in the latter&rsquo;s case, that of the
+      flagrantly vain appeal in the countenance for some other exhibition of a
+      history, of a process of production, than this so superficial one. With
+      the interested and interesting girl sufficiently under our attention while
+      we thus try to evoke her, we may even make out some wonder in her as to
+      why the so perceptibly protrusive lower lip of this acquaintance of an
+      hour or two should positively have contributed to his being handsome
+      instead of much more logically interfering with it. We might in fact in
+      such a case even have followed her into another and no less refined a
+      speculation&mdash;the question of whether the surest seat of his good
+      looks mightn&rsquo;t after all be his high, fair, if somewhat narrow, forehead,
+      crowned with short crisp brown hair and which, after a fashion of its own,
+      predominated without overhanging. He spoke after they had stood just face
+      to face almost long enough for awkwardness. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t forgotten one item
+      of your kindness to me on that rather bleak occasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bleak do you call it?&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;Why I found it, rather, tropical&mdash;&lsquo;lush.&rsquo; 
+      My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of the White City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you made it doubtless bleak for <i>him</i>, let us say. <i>I</i>
+      couldn&rsquo;t let you alone, I remember, about <i>this</i>&mdash;it was like a
+      shipwrecked signal to a sail on the horizon.&rdquo; &ldquo;This&rdquo; obviously meant for
+      the young man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender,
+      to be conscious of a thick solicitation of the eye&mdash;and much more
+      than he, doubtless, of a tug at the imagination; and he broke&mdash;characteristically,
+      you would have been sure&mdash;into a great free gaiety of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we&rsquo;ve nothing particular in the hall,&rdquo; Lady Grace amiably objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I&rsquo;m an ogre,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;before
+      a new and rare feast!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She happily took up his figure. &ldquo;Then won&rsquo;t you begin&mdash;as a first
+      course&mdash;with tea after your ride? If the other, that is&mdash;for
+      there has been an ogre before you&mdash;has left any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some tea, with pleasure&rdquo;&mdash;he looked all his longing; &ldquo;though when
+      you talk of a fellow-feaster I should have supposed that, on such a day as
+      this especially, you&rsquo;d find yourselves running a continuous <i>table
+      d&rsquo;hôte</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we can&rsquo;t work sports in our gallery and saloon&mdash;the banging or
+      whacking and shoving amusements that are all most people care for; unless,
+      perhaps,&rdquo; Lady Grace went on, &ldquo;your own peculiar one, as I understand you,
+      of playing football with the old benighted traditions and attributions you
+      everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old idiotic superstitions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble went more than half-way to meet this description of his
+      fondest activity; he indeed even beckoned it on. &ldquo;The names and stories
+      and styles&mdash;the so often vain legend, not to be too invidious&mdash;of
+      author or subject or school?&rdquo; But he had a drop, no less, as from the
+      sense of a cause sometimes lost. &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s a game at which we <i>all</i>
+      can play!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though scarcely,&rdquo; Lady Grace suggested, &ldquo;at which we all can score.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words appeared indeed to take meaning from his growing impression of
+      the place and its charm&mdash;of the number of objects, treasures of art,
+      that pressed for appreciation of their importance. &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;no one can ever have scored much on sacred spots of <i>this</i> order&mdash;which
+      express so the grand impunity of their pride, their claims, their
+      assurance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had great luck,&rdquo; she granted&mdash;&ldquo;as I&rsquo;ve just been reminded; but
+      ever since those terrible things you told me in town&mdash;about the
+      tremendous tricks of the whirligig of time and the aesthetic fools&rsquo; 
+      paradise in which so many of us live&mdash;I&rsquo;ve gone about with my heart
+      in my mouth. Who knows that while I talk Mr. Bender mayn&rsquo;t be pulling us
+      to pieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble had a shudder of remembrance. &ldquo;Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rich American who&rsquo;s going round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave him a sharper shock. &ldquo;The wretch who bagged Lady Lappington&rsquo;s
+      Longhi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace showed surprise. &ldquo;Is he a wretch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her visitor but asked to be extravagant. &ldquo;Rather&mdash;the scoundrel. He
+      offered his infernal eight thousand down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I thought you meant he had played some trick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish he had&mdash;he could then have been collared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Lady Grace peacefully smiled, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s no use his offering <i>us</i>
+      eight thousand&mdash;or eighteen or even eighty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble stared as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance, almost
+      crude on exquisite lips and contradicting an imputation no one would have
+      indecently made. &ldquo;Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man surely doesn&rsquo;t <i>suppose</i>
+      you&rsquo;d traffic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might, while she still smiled at him, have been fairly enjoying the
+      friendly horror she produced. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite know what he supposes. But
+      people <i>have</i> trafficked; people do; people are trafficking all
+      round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Hugh Crimble cried, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what deprives me of my rest and, as a
+      lover of our vast and beneficent art-wealth, poisons my waking hours. That
+      art-wealth is at the mercy of a leak there appears no means of stopping.&rdquo;
+       She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent flood might
+      almost at any moment become copious. &ldquo;Precious things are going out of our
+      distracted country at a quicker rate than the very quickest&mdash;a
+      century and more ago&mdash;of their ever coming in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom stirred
+      thought soon found connections and relations. &ldquo;Well, I suppose our
+      art-wealth came in&mdash;save for those awkward Elgin Marbles!&mdash;mainly
+      by purchase too, didn&rsquo;t it? We ourselves largely took it away from
+      somewhere, didn&rsquo;t we? We didn&rsquo;t <i>grow</i> it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We grew some of the loveliest flowers&mdash;and on the whole to-day the
+      most exposed.&rdquo; He had been pulled up but for an instant. &ldquo;Great
+      Gainsboroughs and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and
+      Constables and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you&rsquo;ll recognise, a vast
+      garden in themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully
+      grown than your splendid &lsquo;Duchess of Waterbridge&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl showed herself ready at once to recognise under his eloquence
+      anything he would. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;it&rsquo;s our Sir Joshua, I believe, that Mr.
+      Bender has proclaimed himself particularly &lsquo;after.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It brought a cloud to her friend&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Then he&rsquo;ll be capable of
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of anything, no doubt, but of making my father capable&mdash;! And you
+      haven&rsquo;t at any rate,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so much as seen the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon&mdash;I saw it at the Guildhall three years ago; and am
+      almost afraid of getting again, with a fresh sense of its beauty, a
+      livelier sense of its danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, however, was so far from fear that she could even afford pity.
+      &ldquo;Poor baffled Mr. Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rich and confident Mr. Bender!&rdquo; Crimble cried. &ldquo;Once given his money,
+      his confidence is a horrid engine in itself&mdash;there&rsquo;s the rub! I dare
+      say&rdquo;&mdash;the young man saw it all&mdash;&ldquo;he has brought his poisonous
+      cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it her less exasperated wonder. &ldquo;One has heard of that, but only
+      in the case of some particularly pushing dealer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Bender, to do him justice, isn&rsquo;t a particularly pushing dealer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Lady Grace judiciously returned; &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s not a dealer at all,
+      but just what you a moment ago spoke of yourself as being.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a glance at his possibly wild recent past. &ldquo;A fond true lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As we <i>all</i> were in our lucky time&mdash;when we rum-aged Italy and
+      Spain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He appeared to recognise this complication&mdash;of Bender&rsquo;s voracious
+      integrity; but only to push it away. &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know whether the best
+      lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers&mdash;but I feel to-day that
+      they&rsquo;re the best keepers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The breath of his emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl&rsquo;s dimmer
+      fire. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as if it were suddenly in the air that you&rsquo;ve brought us some
+      light or some help&mdash;that you may do something really good for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean &lsquo;mark down,&rsquo; as they say at the shops, all your greatest
+      claims?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His chord of sensibility had trembled all gratefully into derision, and
+      not to seem to swagger he had put his possible virtue at its lowest. This
+      she beautifully showed that she beautifully saw. &ldquo;I dare say that if you
+      did even that we should have to take it from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it may very well be,&rdquo; he laughed back, &ldquo;the reason why I feel, under
+      my delightful, wonderful impression, a bit anxious and nervous and
+      afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That shows,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;that you suspect us of horrors hiding from
+      justice, and that your natural kindness yet shrinks from handing us over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, clearly, she might put it as she liked&mdash;it all came back to his
+      being more charmed. &ldquo;Heaven knows I&rsquo;ve wanted a chance at you, but what
+      should you say if, having then at last just taken you in in your so
+      apparent perfection, I should feel it the better part of valour simply to
+      mount my &lsquo;bike&rsquo; again and spin away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be sure that at the end of the avenue you&rsquo;d turn right round and
+      come back. You&rsquo;d think again of Mr. Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom I don&rsquo;t, however, you see&mdash;if he&rsquo;s prowling off there&mdash;in
+      the least want to meet.&rdquo; Crimble made the point with gaiety. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+      what I mightn&rsquo;t do to him&mdash;and yet it&rsquo;s not of my temptation to
+      violence, after all, that I&rsquo;m most afraid. It&rsquo;s of the brutal mistake of
+      one&rsquo;s breaking&mdash;with one&rsquo;s priggish, precious modernity and one&rsquo;s
+      possibly futile discriminations&mdash;into a <i>general</i> situation or
+      composition, as we say, so serene and sound and right. What should one do
+      here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one&rsquo;s breath and walk on
+      tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell me,
+      instinctively stay outside. I saw that all,&rdquo; the young man went on with
+      more weight in his ardour, &ldquo;I saw it, while we talked in London, as your
+      natural setting and your native air&mdash;and now ten minutes on the spot
+      have made it sink into my spirit. You&rsquo;re a case, all together, of
+      enchanted harmony, of perfect equilibrium&mdash;there&rsquo;s nothing to be done
+      or said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend listened to this eloquence with her eyes lowered, then raising
+      them to meet, with a vague insistence, his own; after which something she
+      had seen there appeared to determine in her another motion. She indicated
+      the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s report,
+      rapidly studied and denounced. &ldquo;For what do you take that little picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble went over and looked. &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you know? It&rsquo;s a jolly
+      little Vandermeer of Delft.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a base imitation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked again, but appeared at a loss. &ldquo;An imitation of Vandermeer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made the young man ring out: &ldquo;Then Mr. Bender&rsquo;s doubly dangerous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Singly is enough!&rdquo; Lady Grace laughed. &ldquo;But you see you <i>have</i> to
+      speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, to <i>him</i>, rather, after that&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll just take me to
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes then,&rdquo; she said; but even while she spoke Lord John, who had
+      returned, by the terrace, from his quarter of an hour passed with Lady
+      Imber, was there practically between them; a fact that she had to notice
+      for her other visitor, to whom she was hastily reduced to naming him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship eagerly made the most of this tribute of her attention, which
+      had reached his ear; he treated it&mdash;her &ldquo;Oh Lord John!&rdquo;&mdash;as a
+      direct greeting. &ldquo;Ah Lady Grace! I came back particularly to find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could but explain her predicament. &ldquo;I was taking Mr. Crimble to see
+      the pictures.&rdquo; And then more pointedly, as her manner had been virtually
+      an introduction of that gentleman, an introduction which Lord John&rsquo;s mere
+      noncommittal stare was as little as possible a response to: &ldquo;Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s
+      one of the quite new connoisseurs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m at the very lowest round of the ladder. But I aspire!&rdquo; Hugh
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll mount!&rdquo; said Lady Grace with friendly confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it again with gay deprecation. &ldquo;Ah, if by that time there&rsquo;s
+      anything left here to mount <i>on!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won&rsquo;t have
+      been able to carry off.&rdquo; To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a helpful
+      spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had the air of
+      wishing to preserve his detachment: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s to Lord John that we owe Mr.
+      Bender&rsquo;s acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. &ldquo;Then do you
+      happen to know, sir, what your friend means to <i>do</i> with his spoil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a
+      commercially calculating or interested one. &ldquo;Oh, not sell it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then ship it to New York?&rdquo; the inquirer pursued, defining himself somehow
+      as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed
+      relish for being able to displease Lady Grace&rsquo;s odd guest by large assent.
+      &ldquo;As fast as ever he can&mdash;and you can land things there <i>now</i>,
+      can&rsquo;t you? in three or four days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say. But can&rsquo;t he be induced to have a little mercy?&rdquo; Hugh
+      sturdily pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John pushed out his lips. &ldquo;A &lsquo;little&rsquo;? How much do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender&rsquo;s hand than you can empty his
+      purse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the Despoilers!&rdquo; said Crimble with strong expression. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s <i>we</i>,&rdquo;
+       he added, &ldquo;who are base.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Base&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord John&rsquo;s surprise was apparently genuine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To want only to &lsquo;do business,&rsquo; I mean, with our treasures, with our
+      glories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh&rsquo;s words exhaled such a sense of peril as to draw at once Lady Grace.
+      &ldquo;Ah, but if we&rsquo;re above that <i>here</i>, as you know&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood smilingly corrected and contrite. &ldquo;Of course I know&mdash;but you
+      must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all, won&rsquo;t
+      you? the Moretto of Brescia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, didn&rsquo;t you tell me yourself?&rdquo; It went on between them for the moment
+      quite as if there had been no Lord John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Probably, yes,&rdquo; she recalled; &ldquo;so how I must have swaggered!&rdquo; After which
+      she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of urgency.
+      &ldquo;Will you also come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He confessed to a difficulty&mdash;which his whole face begged her also to
+      take account of. &ldquo;I hoped you&rsquo;d be at leisure&mdash;for something I&rsquo;ve so
+      at heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had its effect; she took a rapid decision and turned persuasively to
+      Crimble&mdash;for whom, in like manner, there must have been something in
+      <i>her</i> face. &ldquo;Let Mr. Bender himself then show you. And there are
+      things in the library too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, there are things in the library.&rdquo; Lord John, happy in his gained
+      advantage and addressing Hugh from the strong ground of an initiation
+      already complete, quite sped him on the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh clearly made no attempt to veil the penetration with which he was
+      moved to look from one of these counsellors to the other, though with a
+      ready &ldquo;Thank-you!&rdquo; for Lady Grace he the next instant started in pursuit
+      of Mr. Bender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend seems remarkably hot!&rdquo; Lord John remarked to his young
+      hostess as soon as they had been left together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has cycled twenty miles. And indeed,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;he does appear to
+      care for what he cares for!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion then, during a moment&rsquo;s silence, might have been noting the
+      emphasis of her assent. &ldquo;Have you known him long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor seen him often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only once&mdash;till now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lord John with another pause. But he soon proceeded. &ldquo;Let us
+      leave him then to cool! I haven&rsquo;t cycled twenty miles, but I&rsquo;ve motored
+      forty very much in the hope of <i>this</i>, Lady Grace&mdash;the chance of
+      being able to assure you that I too care very much for what I care for.&rdquo;
+       To which he added on an easier note, as to carry off a slight awkwardness
+      while she only waited: &ldquo;You certainly mustn&rsquo;t let yourself&mdash;between
+      us all&mdash;be worked to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, such days as this&mdash;I&rdquo; She made light enough of her burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t come often to <i>me</i> at least, Lady Grace! I hadn&rsquo;t grasped
+      in advance the scale of your fête,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;but since I&rsquo;ve the great
+      luck to find you alone&mdash;!&rdquo; He paused for breath, however, before the
+      full sequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She helped him out as through common kindness, but it was a trifle
+      colourless. &ldquo;Alone or in company, Lord John, I&rsquo;m always very glad to see
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that assurance helps me to wonder if you don&rsquo;t perhaps gently guess
+      what it is I want to say.&rdquo; This time indeed she left him to his wonder, so
+      that he had to support himself. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tried, all considerately&mdash;these
+      three months&mdash;to let you see for yourself how I feel. I feel very
+      strongly, Lady Grace; so that at last&rdquo;&mdash;and his impatient sincerity
+      took after another instant the jump&mdash;&ldquo;well, I regularly worship you.
+      You&rsquo;re my absolute ideal. I think of you the whole time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of pretty ribbon.
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you <i>know</i> me enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!&rdquo; Nothing now at least
+      could have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistake
+      showed in her smile he followed it up. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t what you rather mean that
+      you haven&rsquo;t cared sufficiently to know <i>me?</i> If so, that can be
+      little by little mended, Lady Grace.&rdquo; He was in fact altogether gallant
+      about it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but
+      I defy you to find a limit to my possible devotion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. &ldquo;I believe you&rsquo;d be
+      very good to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t <i>that</i> something to start with?&rdquo;&mdash;he fairly pounced
+      on it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do any blest thing in life you like, I&rsquo;ll accept any
+      condition you impose, if you&rsquo;ll only tell me you see your way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t I have a little more first to see yours?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;When you
+      say you&rsquo;ll do anything in life I like, isn&rsquo;t there anything you yourself
+      want strongly enough to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. &ldquo;Anything that will
+      make money, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make money or make reputation&mdash;or even just make the time pass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?&rdquo; If that was her
+      meaning he could show after an instant that he didn&rsquo;t fear it. &ldquo;Well, your
+      father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me to understand
+      that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I&rsquo;ve noticed, as you
+      doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs a fellow&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the obvious moral for her to take up&mdash;which she did, but all
+      interrogatively. &ldquo;The fellow at once comes in for something awfully good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t in the least mind your laughing at me,&rdquo; Lord John returned, &ldquo;for
+      when I put him the question of the lift he&rsquo;d give me by speaking to you
+      first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty in which he
+      leaves you, and yet which doesn&rsquo;t come&mdash;take my word!&rdquo; said the young
+      man sagely&mdash;&ldquo;from his being at all indifferent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered&mdash;&ldquo;father isn&rsquo;t indifferent. But father&rsquo;s &lsquo;great&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great indeed!&rdquo;&mdash;her friend took it as with full comprehension. This
+      appeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought. &ldquo;Too
+      great for <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he makes me feel&mdash;even as his daughter&mdash;my extreme
+      comparative smallness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a <i>grand
+      seigneur</i>, and a serious one&mdash;that&rsquo;s what he is: the very type and
+      model of it, down to the ground. So you can imagine,&rdquo; the young man said,
+      &ldquo;what he makes me feel&mdash;most of all when he&rsquo;s so awfully good-natured
+      to me. His being as &lsquo;great&rsquo; as you say and yet backing me&mdash;such as I
+      am!&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t <i>that</i> strike you as a good note for me, the best
+      you could possibly require? For he really <i>would</i> like what I propose
+      to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might have been noting, while she thought, that he had risen to
+      ingenuity, to fineness, on the wings of his argument; under the effect of
+      which her reply had the air of a concession. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;he would like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he <i>has</i> spoken to you?&rdquo; her suitor eagerly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t needed&mdash;he has ways of letting one know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, he has ways; all his own&mdash;like everything else he has.
+      He&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She fully agreed. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of it appeared somehow to shorten at once for Lord John the rest
+      of his approach to a conclusion. &ldquo;So you do see your way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;!&rdquo; she said with a quick sad shrinkage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; her visitor hastened to explain, &ldquo;if he does put it to you as
+      the very best idea he has for you. When he does that&mdash;as I believe
+      him ready to do&mdash;will you really and fairly listen to him? I&rsquo;m
+      certain, honestly, that when you know me better&mdash;!&rdquo; His confidence in
+      short donned a bravery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been feeling this quarter of an hour,&rdquo; the girl returned, &ldquo;that I do
+      know you better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then isn&rsquo;t that all I want?&mdash;unless indeed I ought perhaps to ask
+      rather if it isn&rsquo;t all <i>you</i> do! At any rate,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;I may
+      see you again here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited a moment. &ldquo;You must have patience with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>am</i> having it But <i>after</i> your father&rsquo;s appeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that must come first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you won&rsquo;t dodge it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him straight &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t dodge, Lord John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He admired the manner of it &ldquo;You look awfully handsome as you say so&mdash;and
+      you see what <i>that</i> does to me.&rdquo; As to attentuate a little the
+      freedom of which he went on: &ldquo;May I fondly hope that if Lady Imber too
+      should wish to put in another word for me&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will I listen to her?&rdquo;&mdash;it brought Lady Grace straight down. &ldquo;No,
+      Lord John, let me tell you at once that I&rsquo;ll do nothing of the sort
+      Kitty&rsquo;s quite another affair, and I never listen to her a bit more than I
+      can help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John appeared to feel, on this, that he mustn&rsquo;t too easily, in
+      honour, abandon a person who had presented herself to him as an ally. &ldquo;Ah,
+      you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself&mdash;in his
+      looser moments!&mdash;takes pleasure in what she says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young woman&rsquo;s eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, had no
+      mercy for its extreme feebleness. &ldquo;If you mean that she&rsquo;s the most
+      reckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as when
+      she&rsquo;s at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out her
+      interest, she has learnt to &lsquo;get round&rsquo; him till he only sees through her
+      eyes&mdash;if you mean <i>that</i> I understand you perfectly. But even if
+      you think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it&rsquo;s not
+      on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his
+      youngest is moved to have most confidence in <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in
+      his face; but then recovering himself: &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t perhaps an absolutely
+      boundless confidence&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In any one in the world but himself?&rdquo;&mdash;she had taken him straight
+      up. &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t indeed, and that&rsquo;s what we must come to; so that even if he
+      likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won&rsquo;t be because
+      you are right about your being nice, but because <i>he</i> is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he
+      isn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace was indeed sure. &ldquo;Absolutely&mdash;if he had begun so! He began
+      so with Kitty&mdash;that is with allowing her everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John appeared struck. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and he still allows her two
+      thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it&mdash;she has never told me how much!&rdquo; the girl
+      undisguisedly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then perhaps I oughtn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;&mdash;he glowed with the light of contrition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can&rsquo;t help it now,&rdquo; his companion remarked with amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that he ought to allow <i>you</i> as much?&rdquo; Lord John inquired.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re right, and that he will,&rdquo; he continued quite as in good
+      faith; &ldquo;but I want you to understand that I don&rsquo;t care in the least what
+      it may be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very good to say so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that
+      they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a
+      third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them
+      was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question.
+      &ldquo;Will you let <i>him</i> tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?&mdash;and
+      then let me come back and have it from you again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace&rsquo;s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person
+      by whom they were now joined. &ldquo;Lord John desires you should tell me,
+      father, how good you think him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Good,&rsquo; my dear?&mdash;good for what?&rdquo; said Lord Theign a trifle
+      absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel I must ask <i>him</i> to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall give him a chance&mdash;as I should particularly like you to
+      go back and deal with those overwhelming children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they don&rsquo;t overwhelm <i>you</i>, father!&rdquo;&mdash;the girl put it with
+      some point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean to say I overwhelmed <i>them</i>, I dare say I did,&rdquo; he
+      replied&mdash;&ldquo;from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred
+      painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for
+      the time: I pumped advice&mdash;oh <i>such</i> advice!&mdash;and they held
+      the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his
+      back. The bucket, under the stream&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was bound to overflow?&rdquo; Lady Grace suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not
+      unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,&rdquo; Lord
+      Theign insisted, &ldquo;go and deal with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter&rsquo;s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. &ldquo;You work people
+      up, father, and then leave others to let them down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The two things,&rdquo; he promptly replied, &ldquo;require different natures.&rdquo; To
+      which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of
+      harshness, &ldquo;Go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a
+      certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and
+      resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The nature that <i>can</i> let you down&mdash;I rather like it, you
+      know!&rdquo; Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were
+      perhaps just slightly rash words&mdash;his companion gave him so sharp a
+      look as the two were left together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the
+      impression his daughter appeared to have given him. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t want to
+      go?&rdquo; And then before Lord John could reply: &ldquo;What the deuce is the matter
+      with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took his time. &ldquo;I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young man who was just with her&mdash;and whom she appears to have
+      invited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he then?&rdquo; Lord Theign demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Off there among the pictures&mdash;which he seems partly to have come
+      for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;&mdash;it made his lordship easier. &ldquo;Then he&rsquo;s all right&mdash;on
+      such a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion could none the less just wonder. &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t Lady Grace told
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he was coming? Not that I remember.&rdquo; But Lord Theign, perceptibly
+      preoccupied, made nothing of this. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had other fish to fry, and you
+      know the freedom I allow her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend had a vivid gesture. &ldquo;My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!&rdquo;
+       With which there might well have been in Lord John&rsquo;s face a light of
+      comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained&mdash;as to show
+      himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. &ldquo;She has her friends by the
+      score&mdash;at this time of day.&rdquo; There was clearly a claim here also&mdash;to
+      <i>know</i> the time of day. &ldquo;But in the matter of friends where, by the
+      way, is your own&mdash;of whom I&rsquo;ve but just heard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they&rsquo;ll have met and taken care
+      of each other.&rdquo; Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of
+      Lord John&rsquo;s difficulties. &ldquo;I mustn&rsquo;t appear to Bender to have failed him;
+      but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my
+      opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken
+      to Lady Grace. It hasn&rsquo;t been perhaps,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;quite the pick of a
+      chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I&rsquo;m not too fondly mistaken,
+      at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I&rsquo;ve led her to
+      expect&mdash;for our case&mdash;that you&rsquo;ll be so good, without loss of
+      time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without loss, you mean, of&mdash;a&mdash;my daughter&rsquo;s time?&rdquo; Lord
+      Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations&mdash;yet
+      with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never
+      forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his
+      public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that
+      had presently dropped&mdash;to the effect, we should have guessed, of his
+      appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His
+      appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects
+      charming&mdash;with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost
+      suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him,
+      his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to
+      deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a
+      passion for simplicity&mdash;simplicity, above all, of relation with you,
+      and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience
+      of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of
+      decent ease he would, confound you, &ldquo;sink&rdquo; a hundred other attributes&mdash;or
+      the recognition at least and the formulation of them&mdash;that you might
+      abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly
+      vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He
+      sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his
+      consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and
+      amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference
+      in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This
+      would be quite his religion, you might infer&mdash;to cause his hands to
+      ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an
+      unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of
+      ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so
+      shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a
+      certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not
+      measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but
+      by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming
+      expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so
+      presented to an ideal privately invoked&mdash;that of his establishing in
+      the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short
+      perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would
+      mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at
+      the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than
+      anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin&mdash;in
+      fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his
+      lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes&mdash;<i>that</i>, of course, in all propriety,&rdquo; his companion
+      has meanwhile replied to it. &ldquo;But I was thinking a little, you understand,
+      of the importance of our own time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the
+      comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers
+      even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to
+      &ldquo;understand&rdquo; in this particular connection&mdash;it would be his
+      familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work
+      for him. &ldquo;&lsquo;Our own&rsquo; in the sense of yours and mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of yours and mine and Lady Imber&rsquo;s, yes&mdash;and a good bit, last not
+      least, in that of my watching and waiting mother&rsquo;s.&rdquo; This struck no prompt
+      spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: &ldquo;The
+      last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old
+      frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the
+      whole question, she <i>is</i>, don&rsquo;t you know? What she put to me&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking <i>all</i> questions
+      straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don&rsquo;t we, decidedly, take up
+      practically her very handsome offer&mdash;&lsquo;very handsome&rsquo; being, I mean,
+      what <i>she</i> calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as
+      rather decent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. &ldquo;Kitty has of course
+      rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on
+      me&mdash;successfully!&mdash;for everything, and it suits her down to the
+      ground. She pays her beastly debt&mdash;that is, I mean to say,&rdquo; and he
+      took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, &ldquo;discharges
+      her obligations&mdash;by her sister&rsquo;s fair hand; not to mention a few
+      other trifles for which I naturally provide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but
+      briefly at a loss. &ldquo;Of course we take into account, don&rsquo;t we? not only the
+      fact of my mother&rsquo;s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering)
+      that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed
+      readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over and above Kitty&rsquo;s release from her damnable payment?&rdquo;&mdash;Lord
+      Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. &ldquo;Of
+      course we take <i>everything</i> into account&mdash;or I shouldn&rsquo;t, my
+      dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose
+      aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there&rsquo;s nothing, you easily
+      conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your
+      family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn&rsquo;t be quite as sure of
+      by just staying in her own. The Duchess&rsquo;s idea, at any rate, if I&rsquo;ve
+      followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve
+      thousand; with the condition&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John was already all there. &ldquo;Definitely, yes, of your settling the
+      equivalent on Lady Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself,
+      I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time,
+      am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his
+      friend&rsquo;s general resources, to consider that question seriously. &ldquo;Surely
+      you can have no difficulty whatever&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&mdash;when you can see for yourself that I&rsquo;ve had this year to
+      let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have <i>liked</i>
+      to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the
+      very much lower figure of Kitty&rsquo;s horrid incubus?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but the inducement and the <i>quid pro quo</i>,&rdquo; Lord John brightly
+      indicated, &ldquo;are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only
+      have removed the incubus&mdash;which, I grant you, she must and you must
+      feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber <i>and</i> marry Lady
+      Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has
+      just expressed&mdash;to himself&mdash;a very kind and very high opinion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has expressed a very high opinion of you?&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign scarce
+      glowed with credulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the younger man held his ground. &ldquo;She has told me she thoroughly likes
+      me and that&mdash;though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things&mdash;she
+      thinks me perfectly charming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;what does
+      she want more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She very possibly wants nothing&mdash;but I&rsquo;m to that beastly degree, you
+      see,&rdquo; his visitor patiently explained, &ldquo;in the cleft stick of my fearfully
+      positive mother&rsquo;s wants. Those are her &lsquo;terms,&rsquo; and I don&rsquo;t mind saying
+      that they&rsquo;re most disagreeable to me&mdash;I quite hate &lsquo;em: there! Only I
+      think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn&rsquo;t touch &lsquo;em with a long
+      pole if my personal feeling&mdash;in respect to Lady Grace&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t so
+      immensely enlisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you I&rsquo;d chuck &lsquo;em out of window, my boy, if I didn&rsquo;t believe
+      you&rsquo;d be really good to her,&rdquo; Lord Theign returned with the properest
+      spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It only encouraged his companion. &ldquo;You <i>will</i> just tell her then, now
+      and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeal required a moment&mdash;a longer look at him. &ldquo;You truly hold
+      that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your
+      job?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the conviction I entertain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign thought again. &ldquo;Well, even if your conviction&rsquo;s just, that
+      still doesn&rsquo;t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of
+      the least use for me to fumble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Lord John laughed, &ldquo;when a man has such a tremendous assortment of
+      breeches&mdash;!&rdquo; He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught
+      the great vista of the open rooms. &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a question of pockets&mdash;and
+      what&rsquo;s <i>in</i> &lsquo;em&mdash;here precisely is my man!&rdquo; This personage had
+      come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of
+      the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John&rsquo;s welcome was warm.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of
+      joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this
+      assistance. &ldquo;Happy to meet you&mdash;especially in your beautiful home,
+      Lord Theign.&rdquo; To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood
+      good-humouredly passive to his approach: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been round, by your kind
+      permission and the light of nature, and haven&rsquo;t required support; though
+      if I had there&rsquo;s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any
+      amount.&rdquo; Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand
+      this contributory figure. &ldquo;A young, spare, nervous gentleman with
+      eye-glasses&mdash;I guess he&rsquo;s an author. A friend of yours too?&rdquo; he asked
+      of Lord John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was prompt and emphatic. &ldquo;No, the gentleman is no friend at all
+      of mine, Mr. Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend of my daughter&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Lord Theign easily explained. &ldquo;I hope they&rsquo;re
+      looking after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and
+      were so good as to move something,&rdquo; Mr. Bender conscientiously added, &ldquo;so
+      that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.
+      &ldquo;Up on a chair? I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender took another view. &ldquo;Why, I got right up myself&mdash;a little
+      more and I&rsquo;d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know&mdash;&ldquo;in that
+      Moretto.&rdquo; And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.
+      &ldquo;I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid
+      Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too&mdash;but
+      it didn&rsquo;t lead to our moving any more furniture.&rdquo; On which he paused as to
+      enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host&rsquo;s reassurance. &ldquo;It <i>has</i>
+      yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you
+      prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign met Mr. Bender&rsquo;s eyes while this inquirer left these few
+      portentous words to speak for themselves. &ldquo;To the effect that I part to
+      you with &lsquo;The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge&rsquo;? No, Mr. Bender, such a
+      proposition would leave me intensely cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. &ldquo;My dear Bender, I <i>envy</i>
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you don&rsquo;t envy me,&rdquo; his friend serenely replied, &ldquo;as much as I
+      envy Lord Theign.&rdquo; And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to
+      face each other searchingly and firmly: &ldquo;What I allude to is an overture
+      of a strong and simple stamp&mdash;such as perhaps would shed a softer
+      light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I&rsquo;ve had
+      some experience of first shocks, and I&rsquo;d be glad to meet you as man to
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no
+      irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less
+      evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. &ldquo;As rich man to poor
+      man is how I&rsquo;m to understand it? For me to meet <i>you</i>,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I
+      should have to be tempted&mdash;and I&rsquo;m not even temptable. So there we
+      are,&rdquo; he blandly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John.
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,&rsquo; Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of
+      one of those great family trees of which respectable people don&rsquo;t lop off
+      the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they
+      so much enjoy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. &ldquo;Then if
+      they don&rsquo;t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors
+      bought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,&rdquo; Lord Theign
+      asked, &ldquo;that they&rsquo;re definitely not bought at Dedborough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, &ldquo;you talk as if it were my
+      interest to be <i>reasonable</i>&mdash;which shows how little you
+      understand. I&rsquo;d be ashamed&mdash;with the lovely ideas I have&mdash;if I
+      didn&rsquo;t make you kick.&rdquo; And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed
+      his faith. &ldquo;Well, I guess I can wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from
+      which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more
+      sustained look to keep straying toward their host. &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s bound to
+      <i>have</i> something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his
+      friend&rsquo;s mute pressure. &ldquo;&lsquo;Something&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something, Mr. Bender?&rdquo; Lord John insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. &ldquo;Why, have <i>you</i> an
+      interest, Lord John?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
+      referred it to Lord Theign. &ldquo;Do you authorise me to speak&mdash;a little&mdash;as
+      if I have an interest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign gave the appeal&mdash;and the speaker&mdash;a certain
+      attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. &ldquo;My
+      dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mean at your expense,&rdquo; Lord John laughed&mdash;&ldquo;I mean at Mr.
+      Bender&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, go ahead, Lord John,&rdquo; said that gentleman, always easy, but always
+      too, as you would have felt, aware of everything&mdash;&ldquo;go ahead, but
+      don&rsquo;t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn&rsquo;t already exist
+      in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here&mdash;has in fact
+      been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I&rsquo;ve got some
+      peculiarity, for it doesn&rsquo;t seem as if the thing could be done. If the
+      germ is there, on the other hand,&rdquo; Mr. Bender conceded, &ldquo;it develops
+      independently of all encouragement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
+      &ldquo;He thinks I really mean to <i>offer</i> him something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
+      the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
+      toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to
+      light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing
+      so that he made the remark: &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes me the more sorry, sir,&rdquo; said his visitor, &ldquo;not to have been
+      enough for <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I risk it, at any rate,&rdquo; Lord John went on&mdash;&ldquo;I put you, Bender, the
+      question of whether you wouldn&rsquo;t Move,&rsquo; as you say, to acquire that
+      Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s large face had a commensurate gaze. &ldquo;As I say? I haven&rsquo;t said
+      anything of the sort!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you do &lsquo;love&rsquo; you know,&rdquo; Lord John slightly overgrimaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t when I don&rsquo;t want to. I&rsquo;m different from most people&mdash;I can
+      love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto,&rdquo; Mr. Bender
+      continued, &ldquo;is that it ain&rsquo;t what I&rsquo;m after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His &ldquo;after&rdquo; had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack on
+      the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
+      John&rsquo;s speaking again across to their host. &ldquo;The worst he can do for me,
+      you see, is to refuse it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling
+      about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had
+      but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the very first time
+      in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or
+      anything else in it, has been offered&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn&rsquo;t dropped Mr. Bender
+      mightn&rsquo;t have been markedly impressed. &ldquo;Then it must be the very first
+      time such an offer has failed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it isn&rsquo;t that we in the least press it!&rdquo; Lord Theign quite naturally
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I beg your pardon&mdash;I press it very hard!&rdquo; And Lord John, as
+      taking from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went
+      so far as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion&rsquo;s
+      native form. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you don&rsquo;t feel the interest of that
+      Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. &ldquo;Well, if you had
+      seen me up on that chair you&rsquo;d have thought I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stepped down quite impressed with that young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble?&rdquo;&mdash;it came after an instant to Lord John. &ldquo;With <i>his</i>
+      opinion, really? Then I hope he&rsquo;s aware of the picture&rsquo;s value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better ask him,&rdquo; Mr. Bender observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we don&rsquo;t depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!&rdquo; Lord John returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. &ldquo;Are you aware of the value
+      yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their
+      entertainer. &ldquo;Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared, a bit
+      extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of hovering
+      aloof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That question needn&rsquo;t trouble us&mdash;when I see how much Mr. Bender
+      himself knows about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at.&rdquo; And then
+      as the others waited, &ldquo;Ten thousand,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten thousand?&rdquo; The owner of the work showed no emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lord John again in Mr. Bender&rsquo;s style, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the matter
+      with ten thousand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject of his gay tribute considered. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing the matter
+      with ten thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;is there anything the matter with the
+      picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;I guess there is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave an upward push to his lordship&rsquo;s eyebrows. &ldquo;But what in the world&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s just the question!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyebrows continued to rise. &ldquo;Does he pretend there&rsquo;s a question of
+      whether it <i>is</i> a Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what he was up there trying to find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if the value&rsquo;s, according to himself, ten thousand&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a fine work anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the matter with <i>you</i>,
+      Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That gentleman was perfectly clear. &ldquo;The matter with me, Lord Theign, is
+      that I&rsquo;ve no use for a ten thousand picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;No use?&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;the expression had an oddity. &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s it your idea
+      to do with such things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; Mr. Bender explained, &ldquo;that a picture of that rank is not what
+      I&rsquo;m after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The figure,&rdquo; said his noble host&mdash;speaking thus, under pressure,
+      commercially&mdash;&ldquo;is beyond what you see your way to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lord John had jumped at the truth. &ldquo;The matter with Mr. Bender is that
+      he sees his way much further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Further?&rdquo; their companion echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. &ldquo;Well, there would be no
+      difficulty about <i>that</i>, I think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said his guest, &ldquo;you know the basis, sir, on which I&rsquo;m ready to
+      pay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the basis then of the Sir Joshua,&rdquo; Lord John inquired, &ldquo;how far would
+      you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety
+      by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d go
+      all the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants, you see,&rdquo; Lord John elucidated, &ldquo;an <i>ideally</i> expensive
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant
+      spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. &ldquo;Then why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you can&rsquo;t do violence to <i>that</i> master&rsquo;s natural modesty,&rdquo;
+       Mr. Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at
+      this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once
+      supplied a further light. &ldquo;I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble had come back from his voyage of discovery, and it was
+      visible as he stood there flushed and quite radiant that he had caught in
+      his approach Lord Theign&rsquo;s last inquiry and Mr. Bender&rsquo;s reply to it. You
+      would have imputed to him on the spot the lively possession of a new idea,
+      the sustaining sense of a message important enough to justify his
+      irruption. He looked from one to the other of the three men, scattered a
+      little by the sight of him, but attached eyes of recognition then to Lord
+      Theign&rsquo;s, whom he remained an instant longer communicatively smiling at.
+      After which, as you might have gathered, he all confidently plunged,
+      taking up the talk where the others had left it. &ldquo;I should say, Lord
+      Theign, if you&rsquo;ll allow me, in regard to what you appear to have been
+      discussing, that it depends a good deal on just that question&mdash;of
+      what your Moretto, at any rate, may be presumed or proved to &lsquo;be.&rsquo; Let me
+      thank you,&rdquo; he cheerfully went on, &ldquo;for your kind leave to go over your
+      treasures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The personage he so addressed was, as we know, nothing if not generally
+      affable; yet if that was just then apparent it was through a shade of
+      coolness for the slightly heated familiarity of so plain, or at least so
+      free, a young man in eye-glasses, now for the first time definitely
+      apprehended. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve scarcely &lsquo;treasures&rsquo;&mdash;but I&rsquo;ve some things of
+      interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh, however, entering the opulent circle, as it were, clearly took
+      account of no breath of a chill. &ldquo;I think possible, my lord, that you&rsquo;ve a
+      great treasure&mdash;if you&rsquo;ve really so high a rarity as a splendid
+      Manto-vano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A &lsquo;Mantovano&rsquo;?&rdquo; You wouldn&rsquo;t have been sure that his lordship didn&rsquo;t
+      pronounce the word for the first time in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There have been supposed to be only <i>seven</i> real examples about the
+      world; so that if by an extraordinary chance you find yourself the
+      possessor of a magnificent eighth&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lord John had already broken in. &ldquo;Why, there you <i>are</i>, Mr.
+      Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Bender, with whom I&rsquo;ve made acquaintance,&rdquo; Hugh returned, &ldquo;was
+      there as it began to work in me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That your Moretto, Lord Theign&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender took their informant up&mdash;&ldquo;isn&rsquo;t,
+      after all, a Moretto at all.&rdquo; And he continued amusedly to Hugh: &ldquo;It began
+      to work in you, sir, like very strong drink!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I understand you to suggest,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked of the startling young
+      man, &ldquo;that my precious picture isn&rsquo;t genuine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Hugh knew exactly what he suggested. &ldquo;As a picture, Lord Theign, as
+      a great portrait, one of the most genuine things in Europe. But it strikes
+      me as probable that from far back&mdash;for reasons!&mdash;there has been
+      a wrong attribution; that the work has been, in other words,
+      traditionally, obstinately miscalled. It has passed for a Moretto, and at
+      first I quite took it for one; but I suddenly, as I looked and looked and
+      saw and saw, began to doubt, and now I know <i>why</i> I doubted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had during this speech kept his eyes on the ground; but he
+      raised them to Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s almost palpitating presence for the remark:
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to say that I hope you&rsquo;ve some very good grounds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve three or four, Lord Theign; they seem to me of the best&mdash;as
+      yet. They made me wonder and wonder&mdash;and then light splendidly
+      broke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship didn&rsquo;t stint his attention. &ldquo;Reflected, you mean, from <i>other</i>
+      Mantovanos&mdash;that I don&rsquo;t know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean from those I know myself,&rdquo; said Hugh; &ldquo;and I mean from fine
+      analogies with one in particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Analogies that in all these years, these centuries, have so remarkably
+      not been noticed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Hugh competently explained, &ldquo;they&rsquo;re a sort of thing the very
+      sense of, the value and meaning of, are a highly modern&mdash;in fact a
+      quite recent growth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John at this professed with cordiality that he at least quite
+      understood. &ldquo;Oh, we know a lot more about our pictures and things than
+      ever our ancestors did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess it&rsquo;s enough for <i>me</i>,&rdquo; Mr. Bender contributed, &ldquo;that
+      your ancestors knew enough to get &lsquo;em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that doesn&rsquo;t go so far,&rdquo; cried Hugh, &ldquo;unless we ourselves know enough
+      to keep &lsquo;em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words appeared to quicken in a manner Lord Theign&rsquo;s view of the
+      speaker. &ldquo;Were <i>your</i> ancestors, Mr. Crimble, great collectors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrested, it might be, in his general assurance, Hugh wondered and smiled.
+      &ldquo;Mine&mdash;collectors? Oh, I&rsquo;m afraid I haven&rsquo;t any&mdash;to speak of.
+      Only it has seemed to me for a long time,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that on that head we
+      should all feel together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign looked for a moment as if these were rather large
+      presumptions; then he put them in their place a little curtly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s one
+      thing to keep our possessions for ourselves&mdash;it&rsquo;s another to keep
+      them for other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Hugh good-humouredly returned, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m perhaps not so absolutely sure
+      of myself, if you press me, as that I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be glad of a higher and
+      wiser opinion&mdash;I mean than my own. It would be awfully interesting,
+      if you&rsquo;ll allow me to say so, to have the judgment of one or two of the
+      great men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not yourself, Mr. Crimble, one of the great men?&rdquo; his host asked
+      with tempered irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess he&rsquo;s going to be, anyhow,&rdquo; Mr. Bender cordially struck in;
+      &ldquo;and this remarkable exhibition of intelligence may just let him loose on
+      the world, mayn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Bender!&rdquo;&mdash;and Hugh obviously tried to look neither
+      elated nor snubbed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve too much still to learn, but I&rsquo;m learning every
+      day, and I shall have learnt immensely this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well at my expense, however,&rdquo; Lord Theign laughed, &ldquo;if you
+      demolish a name we&rsquo;ve held for generations so dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may have held the name dear, my lord,&rdquo; his young critic answered;
+      &ldquo;but my whole point is that, if I&rsquo;m right, you&rsquo;ve held the picture itself
+      cheap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because a Mantovano,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;is so much greater a value?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh met his eyes a moment &ldquo;Are you talking of values pecuniary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What values are <i>not</i> pecuniary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh might, during his hesitation, have been imagined to stand off a
+      little from the question. &ldquo;Well, some things have in a higher degree that
+      one, and some have the associational or the factitious, and some the clear
+      artistic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And some,&rdquo; Mr. Bender opined, &ldquo;have them <i>all</i>&mdash;in the highest
+      degree. But what you mean,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;is that a Mantovano would come
+      higher under the hammer than a Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sir,&rdquo; the young man returned, &ldquo;there aren&rsquo;t any, as I&rsquo;ve just
+      stated, <i>to</i> &lsquo;come.&rsquo; I account&mdash;or I easily can&mdash;for every
+      one of the very small number.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you consider that you account for this one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I shall if you&rsquo;ll give me time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, time!&rdquo; Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. &ldquo;But we&rsquo;ll give you all we&rsquo;ve
+      got&mdash;only I guess it isn&rsquo;t much.&rdquo; And he appeared freely to invite
+      their companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however,
+      they watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had
+      gone on: &ldquo;How much higher&mdash;if your idea is correct about it&mdash;would
+      Lord Theign&rsquo;s picture come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh turned to that nobleman. &ldquo;Does Mr. Bender mean come to <i>him</i>, my
+      lord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done
+      yet at his other invader. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know <i>what</i> Mr. Bender means!&rdquo;
+       With which he turned off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one! But
+      how <i>much</i> higher?&rdquo; the American continued to Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much higher to <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can size <i>that</i>. How much higher as a Mantovano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unmistakably&mdash;for us at least&mdash;our young man was gaining time;
+      he had the instinct of circumspection and delay. &ldquo;To any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than as a Moretto?&rdquo; Hugh continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It even acted on Lord John&rsquo;s nerves. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re talking about&mdash;really!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hugh still took his ease; as if, with his eyes first on Bender and
+      then on Lord Theign, whose back was practically presented, he were
+      covertly studying signs. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he presently said, &ldquo;in view of the very
+      great interest combined with the very great rarity, more than&mdash;ah
+      more than can be estimated off-hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made Lord Theign turn round. &ldquo;But a fine Moretto has a very great
+      rarity and a very great interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but not on the whole the same amount of either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not on the whole the same amount of either!&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender
+      judiciously echoed it. &ldquo;But how,&rdquo; he freely pursued, &ldquo;are you going to
+      find out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I your permission, Lord Theign,&rdquo; Hugh brightly asked, &ldquo;to attempt to
+      find out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question produced on his lordship&rsquo;s part a visible, a natural anxiety.
+      &ldquo;What would it be your idea then to <i>do</i> with my property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing at all here&mdash;it could all be done, I think, at Verona. What
+      besets, what quite haunts me,&rdquo; Hugh explained, &ldquo;is the vivid image of a
+      Mantovano&mdash;one of the glories of the short list&mdash;in a private
+      collection in that place. The conviction grows in me that the two
+      portraits must be of the same original. In fact I&rsquo;ll bet my head,&rdquo; the
+      young man quite ardently wound up, &ldquo;that the wonderful subject of the
+      Verona picture, a very great person clearly, is none other than the very
+      great person of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had listened with interest. &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t he be that and yet from
+      another hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t another hand&rdquo;&mdash;oh Hugh was quite positive. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the hand
+      of the very same painter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you prove it&rsquo;s the same?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only by the most intimate internal evidence, I admit&mdash;and evidence
+      that of course has to be estimated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then who,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;is to estimate it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was all ready&mdash;&ldquo;will you let Pap-pendick, one of
+      the first authorities in Europe, a good friend of mine, in fact more or
+      less my master, and who is generally to be found at Brussels? I happen to
+      know he knows your picture&mdash;he once spoke to me of it; and he&rsquo;ll go
+      and look again at the Verona one, he&rsquo;ll go and judge our issue, if I apply
+      to him, in the light of certain new tips that I shall be able to give
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign appeared to wonder. &ldquo;If you &lsquo;apply&rsquo; to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a shot, I believe, if I ask it of him&mdash;as a service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A service to <i>you?</i> He&rsquo;ll be very obliging,&rdquo; his lordship smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve obliged <i>him!</i>&rdquo; Hugh readily retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The obligation will be to we&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign spoke more formally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the satisfaction,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;will be to all of us. The things
+      Pappendick has seen he intensely, ineffaceably keeps in mind, to every
+      detail; so that he&rsquo;ll tell me&mdash;as no one else really can&mdash;if the
+      Verona man is <i>your</i> man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then,&rdquo; asked Mr. Bender, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve got to believe anyway what he says?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The market,&rdquo; said Lord John with emphasis, &ldquo;would have to believe it&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Hugh returned lightly, &ldquo;the market will have nothing to do with it,
+      I hope; but I think you&rsquo;ll feel when he has spoken that you really know
+      where you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender couldn&rsquo;t doubt of that. &ldquo;Oh, if he gives us a bigger thing we
+      won&rsquo;t complain. Only, how long will it take him to get there? I want him
+      to start right away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll be deeply interested&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We <i>may</i>&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender took it straight up&mdash;&ldquo;get news next
+      week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh addressed his reply to Lord Theign; it was already a little too much
+      as if he and the American between them were snatching the case from that
+      possessor&rsquo;s hands. &ldquo;The day I hear from Pappendick you shall have a full
+      report. And,&rdquo; he conscientiously added, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;m proved to have been
+      unfortunately wrong&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship easily pointed the moral. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have caused me some
+      inconvenience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I shall,&rdquo; the young man unreservedly agreed&mdash;&ldquo;like a
+      wanton meddling ass!&rdquo; His candour, his freedom had decidedly a note of
+      their own. &ldquo;But my conviction, after those moments with your picture, was
+      too strong for me not to speak&mdash;and, since you allow it, I face the
+      danger and risk the test.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I allow it of course in the form of business.&rdquo; This produced in Hugh a
+      certain blankness. &ldquo;&lsquo;Business&rsquo;?&rdquo; &ldquo;If I consent to the inquiry I pay for
+      the inquiry.&rdquo; Hugh demurred. &ldquo;Even if I turn out mistaken?&rdquo; &ldquo;You make me
+      in any event your proper charge.&rdquo; The young man thought again, and then as
+      for vague accommodation: &ldquo;Oh, my charge won&rsquo;t be high!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Mr. Bender protested, &ldquo;it ought to be handsome if the thing&rsquo;s marked
+      <i>up</i>!&rdquo; After which he looked at his watch. &ldquo;But I guess I&rsquo;ve got to
+      go, Lord Theign, though your lovely old Duchess&mdash;for it&rsquo;s to <i>her</i>
+      I&rsquo;ve lost my heart&mdash;does cry out for me again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her then still there,&rdquo; Lord John observed with emphasis, but
+      with his eyes for the time on Lord Theign; &ldquo;and if you want another look
+      at her I&rsquo;ll presently come and take one too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll order your car to the garden-front,&rdquo; Lord Theign added to this;
+      &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll reach it from the saloon, but I&rsquo;ll see you again first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender glared as with the round full force of his pair of motor lamps.
+      &ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;re ready to talk about anything, I am. Good-bye, Mr.
+      Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Mr. Bender.&rdquo; But Hugh, addressing their host while his
+      fellow-guest returned to the saloon, broke into the familiarity of
+      confidence. &ldquo;As if you <i>could</i> be ready to &lsquo;talk&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This produced on the part of the others present a mute exchange that could
+      only have denoted surprise at all the irrepressible young outsider thus
+      projected upon them took for granted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve an idea,&rdquo; said Lord John to
+      his friend, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;re quite ready to talk with <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh then, with his appetite so richly quickened, could but rejoice. &ldquo;Lady
+      Grace spoke to me of things in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find it <i>that</i> way&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign gave the indication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; said Hugh elatedly, and hastened away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, when he had gone, found relief in a quick comment. &ldquo;Very sharp,
+      no doubt&mdash;but he wants taking down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of Dedborough wouldn&rsquo;t have put it so crudely, but the young
+      expert did bring certain things home. &ldquo;The people my daughters, in the
+      exercise of a wild freedom, do pick up&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you see that all you&rsquo;ve got to do&mdash;on the question we&rsquo;re
+      dealing with&mdash;is to claim your very own wild freedom? Surely I&rsquo;m
+      right in feeling you,&rdquo; Lord John further remarked, &ldquo;to have jumped at once
+      to my idea that Bender is heaven-sent&mdash;and at what they call the
+      psychologic moment, don&rsquo;t they?&mdash;to point that moral. Why look
+      anywhere else for a sum of money that&mdash;smaller or greater&mdash;you
+      can find with perfect ease in that extraordinarily bulging pocket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, slowly pacing the hall again, threw up his hands. &ldquo;Ah, with
+      &lsquo;perfect ease&rsquo; can scarcely be said!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&mdash;when he absolutely thrusts his dirty dollars down your
+      throat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m not talking of ease to <i>him</i>,&rdquo; Lord Theign returned&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      talking of ease to myself. I shall have to make a sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not then&mdash;for so great a convenience&mdash;gallantly make it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear chap, if you want me to sell my Sir Joshua&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the horror in the words said enough, and Lord John felt its chill. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t make a point of that&mdash;God forbid! But there are other things to
+      which the objection wouldn&rsquo;t apply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see how it applies&mdash;in the case of the Moret-to&mdash;for <i>him</i>.
+      A mere Moretto,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;is too cheap&mdash;for a Yankee &lsquo;on
+      the spend.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the Mantovano wouldn&rsquo;t be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It remains to be proved that it <i>is</i> a Mantovano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;go into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hanged if I won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; his friend broke out after a moment. &ldquo;It <i>would</i>
+      suit me. I mean&rdquo;&mdash;the explanation came after a brief intensity of
+      thought&mdash;&ldquo;the possible size of his cheque would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Lord John gaily, &ldquo;I guess there&rsquo;s no limit to the possible size
+      of his cheque!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it would suit me, it would suit me!&rdquo; the elder man, standing there,
+      audibly mused. But his air changed and a lighter question came up to him
+      as he saw his daughter reappear at the door from the terrace. &ldquo;Well, the
+      infant horde?&rdquo; he immediately put to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace came in, dutifully accounting for them. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve marched off&mdash;in
+      a huge procession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank goodness! And our friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All playing tennis,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;save those who are sitting it out.&rdquo;
+       To which she added, as to explain her return: &ldquo;Mr. Crimble has gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took upon him to say. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in the library, to which you
+      addressed him&mdash;making discoveries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not then, I hope,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;to our disadvantage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To your very great honour and glory.&rdquo; Lord John clearly valued the effect
+      he might produce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Moretto of Brescia&mdash;do you know what it really and spendidly
+      is?&rdquo; And then as the girl, in her surprise, but wondered: &ldquo;A Mantovano,
+      neither more nor less. Ever so much more swagger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano?&rdquo; Lady Grace echoed. &ldquo;Why, how tremendously jolly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father was struck. &ldquo;Do you know the artist&mdash;of whom I had never
+      heard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, something of the little that <i>is</i> known.&rdquo; And she rejoiced as
+      her knowledge came to her. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a tremendous swell, because, great as he
+      was, there are but seven proved examples&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With this of yours,&rdquo; Lord John broke in, &ldquo;there are eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why haven&rsquo;t I known about him?&rdquo; Lord Theign put it as if so many
+      other people were guilty for this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter was the first to plead for the vague body. &ldquo;Why, I suppose in
+      order that you should have exactly this pleasure, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pleasures not desired are like acquaintances not sought&mdash;they
+      rather bore one!&rdquo; Lord Theign sighed. With which he moved away from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes followed him an instant&mdash;then she smiled at their guest. &ldquo;Is
+      he bored at having the higher prize&mdash;if you&rsquo;re sure it <i>is</i> the
+      higher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble is sure&mdash;because if he isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Lord John added, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s a
+      wretch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;as he&rsquo;s certainly not a wretch it must be true. And
+      fancy,&rdquo; she exclaimed further, though as more particularly for herself,
+      &ldquo;our having suddenly incurred this immense debt to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shall pay Mr. Crimble!&rdquo; said her father, who had turned round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole question appeared to have provoked in Lord John a rise of
+      spirits and a flush of humour. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you let him stick it on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His host, however, bethinking himself, checked him. &ldquo;Go <i>you</i> to Mr.
+      Bender straight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John saw the point. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;till he leaves. But I shall find you
+      here, shan&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; he asked with all earnestness of Lady Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had an hesitation, but after a look at her father she assented. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+      wait for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then <i>à tantôt!</i>&rdquo; It made him show for happy as, waving his hand at
+      her, he proceeded to seek Mr. Bender in presence of the object that most
+      excited that gentleman&rsquo;s appetite&mdash;to say nothing of the effect
+      involved on Lord John&rsquo;s own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved&mdash;it might have been nervously&mdash;about
+      the place a little, but soon broke ground. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have told you, I
+      understand, that I&rsquo;ve promised to speak to you for him. But I understand
+      also that he has found something to say for himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we talked&mdash;a while since,&rdquo; the girl said. &ldquo;At least <i>he</i>
+      did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he speaks very well&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve never disliked him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It pulled her father up. &ldquo;Is that <i>all</i>&mdash;when I think so much of
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone
+      far; but she waited a little. &ldquo;Do you think very, <i>very</i> much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely I&rsquo;ve made my good opinion clear to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she had a pause. &ldquo;Oh yes, I&rsquo;ve seen you like him and believe in him&mdash;and
+      I&rsquo;ve found him pleasant and clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has never had,&rdquo; Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained, &ldquo;what
+      I call a real show.&rdquo; But the character under discussion could after all be
+      summed up without searching analysis. &ldquo;I consider nevertheless that
+      there&rsquo;s plenty in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. &ldquo;He strikes me
+      as naturally quick and&mdash;well, nice. But I agree with you than he
+      hasn&rsquo;t had a chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to
+      one I dare say you&rsquo;ll find your reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her
+      companion&rsquo;s manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped.
+      Didn&rsquo;t he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn&rsquo;t his
+      visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and indeed
+      rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? &ldquo;Do you desire it
+      very particularly?&rdquo; was, however, all she at last brought out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it exceedingly&mdash;if you act from conviction. Then of
+      course only; but of one thing I&rsquo;m myself convinced&mdash;of what he thinks
+      of yourself and feels for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then would you mind my waiting a little?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I mean to be
+      absolutely sure of myself.&rdquo; After which, on his delaying to agree, she
+      added frankly, as to help her case: &ldquo;Upon my word, father, I should like
+      to do what would please you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it determined in him a sharper impatience. &ldquo;Ah, what would please <i>me!</i>
+      Don&rsquo;t put it off on &lsquo;me&rsquo;! Judge absolutely for yourself&rdquo;&mdash;he slightly
+      took himself up&mdash;&ldquo;in the light of my having consented to do for him
+      what I always <i>hate</i> to do: deviate from my normal practice of never
+      intermeddling. If I&rsquo;ve deviated now you can judge. But to do so all round,
+      of course, take&mdash;in reason!&mdash;your time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for still a little more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked for this, verily, as if it was not in reason. &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; he
+      then returned, &ldquo;what he&rsquo;ll feel that a sign of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell him what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll send him to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at his watch and was going, but after a &ldquo;Thanks, father,&rdquo; she
+      had stopped him. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing more.&rdquo; An embarrassment showed in her
+      manner, but at the cost of some effect of earnest abruptness she
+      surmounted it. &ldquo;What does your American&mdash;Mr. Bender&mdash;want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign plainly felt the challenge. &ldquo;&lsquo;My&rsquo; American? He&rsquo;s none of
+      mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then Lord John&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s none of his either&mdash;more, I mean, than any one else&rsquo;s. He&rsquo;s
+      every one&rsquo;s American, literally&mdash;to all appearance; and I&rsquo;ve not to
+      tell <i>you</i>, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people
+      stalk in and out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, father&mdash;certainly,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re splendidly generous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on
+      that; but he added as if it were enough: &ldquo;What the man must by this time
+      want more than anything else is his car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not then anything of ours?&rdquo; she still insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of &lsquo;ours&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed with a frown. &ldquo;Are you afraid he has an eye to
+      something of <i>yours?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, if we&rsquo;ve a new treasure&mdash;which we certainly have if we possess
+      a Mantovano&mdash;haven&rsquo;t we all, even I, an immense interest in it?&rdquo; And
+      before he could answer, &ldquo;Is <i>that</i> exposed?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any
+      illusion to the &ldquo;exposure&rdquo; of the objects they so solidly sheltered was
+      obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a stroke
+      both his own reassurance and his daughter&rsquo;s. &ldquo;How can there be a question
+      of it when he only wants Sir Joshuas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants ours?&rdquo; the girl gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At absolutely any price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;discussing it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated as between chiding and contenting her&mdash;then he
+      handsomely chose. &ldquo;My dear child, for what do you take me?&rdquo; With which he
+      impatiently started, through the long and stately perspective, for the
+      saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sank into a chair when he had gone; she sat there some moments in a
+      visible tension of thought, her hands clasped in her lap and her dropped
+      eyes fixed and unperceiving; but she sprang up as Hugh Crimble, in search
+      of her, again stood before her. He presented himself as with winged
+      sandals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck to find you! I must take my spin back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve seen everything as you wished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he smiled, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen wonders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She showed her pleasure. &ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;ve got some things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Mr. Bender says!&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got five or six&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only five or six?&rdquo; she cried in bright alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Only&rsquo;?&rdquo; he continued to laugh. &ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s enormous, five or six things
+      of the first importance! But I think I ought to mention to you,&rdquo; he added,
+      &ldquo;a most barefaced &lsquo;Rubens&rsquo; there in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t a Rubens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more than I&rsquo;m a Ruskin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll brand us&mdash;expose us for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ll let you off&mdash;I&rsquo;ll be quiet if you&rsquo;re good, if you go
+      straight. I&rsquo;ll only hold it <i>in terrorem</i>. One can&rsquo;t be sure in these
+      dreadful days&mdash;that&rsquo;s always to remember; so that if you&rsquo;re not good
+      I&rsquo;ll come down on you with it. But to balance against that threat,&rdquo; he
+      went on, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made the very grandest find. At least I believe I have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was all there for this news. &ldquo;Of the Manto-vano&mdash;hidden in the
+      other thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh wondered&mdash;almost as if she had been before him. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean
+      to say <i>you&rsquo;ve</i> had the idea of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but my father has told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is your father,&rdquo; he eagerly asked, &ldquo;really gratified?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With her conscious eyes on him&mdash;her eyes could clearly be very
+      conscious about her father&mdash;she considered a moment. &ldquo;He always
+      prefers old associations and appearances to new; but I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll resign
+      himself if you see your way to a certainty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it will be a question of the weight of expert opinion that I shall
+      invoke. But I&rsquo;m not afraid,&rdquo; he resolutely said, &ldquo;and I shall make the
+      thing, from its splendid rarity, the crown and flower of your glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her serious face shone at him with a charmed gratitude. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s awfully
+      beautiful then your having come to us so. It&rsquo;s awfully beautiful your
+      having brought us this way, in a flash&mdash;as dropping out of a chariot
+      of fire&mdash;more light and what you apparently feel with myself as more
+      honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the beauty&rsquo;s in your having yourself done it!&rdquo; he returned. He gave
+      way to the positive joy of it. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve brought the &lsquo;light&rsquo; and the rest&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      to say the very useful information&mdash;who in the world was it brought
+      <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had a gesture of protest &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have come in some other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure! I&rsquo;m beastly shy&mdash;little as I may seem to show it:
+      save in great causes, when I&rsquo;m horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now
+      at any rate I only know what <i>has</i> been.&rdquo; She turned off for it,
+      moving away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for
+      unrest; and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. &ldquo;But
+      does anything in it all,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;trouble you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She faced about across the wider space, and there was a different note in
+      what she brought out. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what forces me so to <i>tell</i> you
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tell&rsquo; me?&rdquo; he stared. &ldquo;Why, you&rsquo;ve told me nothing more monstrous than
+      that I&rsquo;ve been welcome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of
+      our not &lsquo;going straight&rsquo;? When you said you&rsquo;d expose our bad&mdash;or is
+      it our false?&mdash;Rubens in the event of a certain danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed&rdquo;&mdash;he laughed again as
+      with relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: &ldquo;Why, to
+      let anything&mdash;of your best!&mdash;ever leave Dedborough. By which I
+      mean really of course leave the country.&rdquo; She turned again on this, and
+      something in her air made him wonder. &ldquo;I hope you don&rsquo;t feel there <i>is</i>
+      such a danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was
+      unthinkable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it <i>was</i>, to me, half an hour ago,&rdquo; she said as she came
+      nearer. &ldquo;But if it has since come up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;If&rsquo; it has! But <i>has</i> it? In the form of that monster? What Mr.
+      Bender wants is the great Duchess,&rdquo; he recalled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my father won&rsquo;t sell <i>her</i>? No, he won&rsquo;t sell the great Duchess&mdash;there
+      I feel safe. But he greatly needs a certain sum of money&mdash;or he
+      thinks he does&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve just had a talk with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In which he has told you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has told me nothing,&rdquo; Lady Grace said&mdash;&ldquo;or else told me quite
+      other things. But the more I think of them the more it comes to me that he
+      feels urged or tempted&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To despoil and denude these walls?&rdquo; Hugh broke in, looking about in his
+      sharper apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to satisfy, to save my sister. <i>Now</i> do you think our state so
+      ideal?&rdquo; she asked&mdash;but without elation for her hint of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no answer for this save &ldquo;Ah, but you terribly interest me. May I
+      ask what&rsquo;s the matter with your sister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, she wanted to go on straight now! &ldquo;The matter is&mdash;in the first
+      place&mdash;that she&rsquo;s too dazzlingly, dreadfully beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More beautiful than you?&rdquo; his sincerity easily risked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Millions of times.&rdquo; Sad, almost sombre, she hadn&rsquo;t a shade of coquetry.
+      &ldquo;Kitty has debts&mdash;great heaped-up gaming debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to such amounts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Incredible amounts it appears. And mountains of others too. She throws
+      herself all on our father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he <i>has</i> to pay them? There&rsquo;s no one else?&rdquo; Hugh asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited as if he might answer himself, and then as he apparently
+      didn&rsquo;t, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s only afraid there <i>may</i> be some else&mdash;that&rsquo;s how
+      she makes him do it,&rdquo; she said. And &ldquo;Now do you think,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;that
+      I don&rsquo;t tell you things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she told
+      him. &ldquo;Oh, oh, oh!&rdquo; And then, in the great place, while as, just spent by
+      the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he took them all
+      in. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the situation that, as you say, may force his hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It absolutely, I feel, does force it.&rdquo; And the renewal of her appeal
+      brought her round. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it too lovely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His frank disgust answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too damnable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s you,&rdquo; she quite terribly smiled, &ldquo;who&mdash;by the &lsquo;irony of
+      fate&rsquo;!&mdash;have given him help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smote his head in the light of it. &ldquo;By the Mantovano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the possible Mantovano&mdash;as a substitute for the impossible Sir
+      Joshua. You&rsquo;ve made him aware of a value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but the value&rsquo;s to be fixed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Mr. Bender will fix it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;as he himself would say&mdash;I&rsquo;ll fix Mr. Bender!&rdquo; Hugh
+      declared. &ldquo;And he won&rsquo;t buy a pig in a poke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This cleared the air while they looked at each other; yet she had already
+      asked: &ldquo;What in the world can you do, and how in the world can you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, he was too excited for decision. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite see now, but give me
+      time.&rdquo; And he took out his watch as already to measure it. &ldquo;Oughtn&rsquo;t I
+      before I go to say a word to Lord Theign?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it your idea to become a lion in his path?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, say a cub&mdash;as that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid he&rsquo;ll call me! But I
+      think I should speak to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew a conclusion momentarily dark. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have to learn in that case
+      that I&rsquo;ve told you of my fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is there any good reason why he shouldn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept her eyes on him and the darkness seemed to clear. &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she at
+      last replied, and, having gone to touch an electric bell, was with him
+      again. &ldquo;But I think I&rsquo;m rather sorry for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that represent a reason why I should be so for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little she said nothing; but after that: &ldquo;None whatever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then is the sister of whom you speak Lady Imber?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, at this, raised her hand in caution: the butler had arrived,
+      with due gravity, in answer to her ring; to whom she made known her
+      desire. &ldquo;Please say to his lordship&mdash;in the saloon or wherever&mdash;that
+      Mr. Crimble must go.&rdquo; When Banks had departed, however, accepting the
+      responsibility of this mission, she answered her friend&rsquo;s question. &ldquo;The
+      sister of whom I speak is Lady Imber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loses then so heavily at bridge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loses more than she wins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh gazed as with interest at these oddities of the great. &ldquo;And yet she
+      still plays?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else, in her set, should she do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This he was quite unable to say; but he could after a moment&rsquo;s exhibition
+      of the extent to which he was out of it put a question instead. &ldquo;So <i>you&rsquo;re</i>
+      not in her set?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in her set.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then decidedly,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to save her. I only want&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going on, but she broke in: &ldquo;I know what you want!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eyes on her till he had made sure&mdash;and this deep exchange
+      between them had a beauty. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;re now <i>with</i> me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m now <i>with</i> you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;shake hands on it&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered her his hand, she took it, and their grasp became, as you would
+      have seen in their fine young faces, a pledge in which they stood a minute
+      locked. Lord Theign came upon them from the saloon in the midst of the
+      process; on which they separated as with an air of its having consisted
+      but of Hugh&rsquo;s leave-taking. With some such form of mere civility, at any
+      rate, he appeared, by the manner in which he addressed himself to Hugh, to
+      have supposed them occupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry my daughter can&rsquo;t keep you; but I must at least thank you for
+      your interesting view of my picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of
+      this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with a
+      sense of possibly awkward consequences: &ldquo;May I&mdash;before you&rsquo;re sure of
+      your indebtedness&mdash;put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?&rdquo;
+       It sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous&mdash;as was in
+      fact testified to by his lordship&rsquo;s quick stiff stare, full of wonder at
+      so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. &ldquo;If I
+      contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of the
+      work you speak of, may I have from you an assurance that my success isn&rsquo;t
+      to serve as a basis for any peril&mdash;or possibility&mdash;of its
+      leaving the country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this,
+      turned a shade pale. &ldquo;You ask of me an &lsquo;assurance&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look of
+      having counted the cost of his step. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I <i>must</i>, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. &ldquo;And
+      pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a
+      service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called
+      spirit. &ldquo;A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir&mdash;and
+      with which you may take it from me that I&rsquo;m already quite prepared to
+      dispense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to appear indiscreet,&rdquo; our young man returned; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to
+      have upset you in any way. But I can&rsquo;t overcome my anxiety&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign took the words from his lips. &ldquo;And you therefore invite me&mdash;at
+      the end of half an hour in this house!&mdash;to account to you for my
+      personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to
+      your hands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that
+      stretched about him&mdash;the great loz-enged marble floor that might have
+      figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to
+      &ldquo;stand.&rdquo; &ldquo;I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed
+      not to have seized any chance to appeal to you.&rdquo; Whatever difficulty he
+      had had shyly to face didn&rsquo;t exist for him now. &ldquo;I entreat you to think
+      again, to think <i>well</i>, before you deprive us of such a source of
+      just envy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you regard your entreaty as helped,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;by the
+      beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?&rdquo; Then as his monitor,
+      arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who, showing in her
+      face all the pain of the business, stood off at the distance to which a
+      woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to violence as
+      precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having turned: &ldquo;I ask
+      you that not less than I should like to know whom you speak of as
+      &lsquo;deprived&rsquo; of property that happens&mdash;for reasons that I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you also quarrel with!&mdash;to be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign,&rdquo; Hugh said, &ldquo;but I speak
+      of <i>all</i> of us&mdash;of all the people of England; who would deeply
+      deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear
+      you, I beseech you mercifully to consider.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The interest they bear me?&rdquo;&mdash;the master of Dedborough fairly
+      bristled with wonder. &ldquo;Pray how the devil do they show it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they show it in all sorts of ways&rdquo;&mdash;and Hugh&rsquo;s critical
+      smile, at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner
+      seeming to convey that he meant many things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand then, please,&rdquo; said Lord Theign with every inch of his
+      authority, &ldquo;that they&rsquo;ll show it best by minding their own business while
+      I very particularly mind mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You simply do, in other words,&rdquo; Hugh explicitly concluded, &ldquo;what happens
+      to be convenient to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to <i>you!</i>
+      So that I need no longer detain you,&rdquo; Lord Theign added with the last
+      dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while,
+      unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the cycling-cap
+      he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival. &ldquo;I apologise, my
+      lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your hospitality. But,&rdquo; he went
+      on with his uncommended cheer, &ldquo;my interest in your picture remains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere
+      watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the first
+      time. &ldquo;And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and grows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone,
+      judged her contribution superfluous. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy to hear it, Grace&mdash;but
+      yours is another affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think on the contrary that it&rsquo;s quite the same one,&rdquo; she returned&mdash;&ldquo;since
+      it&rsquo;s on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to you what he has.&rdquo; The
+      resolution she had gathered while she awaited her chance sat in her
+      charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter paternal glare. &ldquo;I
+      let him know that I supposed you to think of profiting by the importance
+      of Mr. Bender&rsquo;s visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you might have spared, my dear, your&mdash;I suppose and hope
+      well-meant&mdash;interpretation of my mind.&rdquo; Lord Theign showed himself at
+      this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without
+      having been in the wrong. &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s visit will terminate&mdash;as soon
+      as he has released Lord John&mdash;without my having profited in the
+      smallest particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. &ldquo;It was Lady
+      Grace&rsquo;s anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her, that my
+      idea about the Moretto would add to your power&mdash;well,&rdquo; he pushed on
+      not without awkwardness, &ldquo;of &lsquo;realising&rsquo; advantageously on such a
+      prospective rise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to
+      Lady Grace. &ldquo;Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any
+      association with this gentleman&rsquo;s ideas&mdash;whether about the Moretto or
+      about anything else&mdash;his further application of them ceases from this
+      moment to concern us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across their
+      companion. &ldquo;Will you make your inquiry for <i>me</i> then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light again kindled in him. &ldquo;With all the pleasure in life!&rdquo; He had
+      found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for departure,
+      with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the direction from
+      which he had entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to Lady
+      Grace. &ldquo;I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public defiance
+      of me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance she
+      met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms into
+      which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not following it
+      up. She pronounced in quick warning &ldquo;Lord John!&rdquo;&mdash;for their friend,
+      released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was already there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. &ldquo;Bender&rsquo;s at last off,
+      but&rdquo;&mdash;he indicated the direction of the garden front&mdash;&ldquo;you may
+      still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained. He
+      looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from his
+      daughter&rsquo;s suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious young
+      woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had a gesture
+      of almost desperate indifference and passed quickly out by the door to the
+      terrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had left Lord John gaping. &ldquo;What on earth&rsquo;s the matter with your
+      father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth indeed?&rdquo; Lady Grace unaidingly asked. &ldquo;Is he discussing
+      with that awful man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?&rdquo; Lord John showed surprise&mdash;which
+      might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he shook everything
+      off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old Bender away. &ldquo;My dear
+      girl, what do <i>we</i> care&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I care immensely, I assure you,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;and I ask of you,
+      please, to tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected, threw
+      him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s not for such
+      a matter I&rsquo;m here, Lady Grace&mdash;I&rsquo;m here with that fond question of my
+      own.&rdquo; And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement motion of
+      protest: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come for your kind answer&mdash;the answer your father
+      instructed me to count on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no kind answer to give you!&rdquo;&mdash;she raised forbidding hands. &ldquo;I
+      entreat you to leave me alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as
+      if stricken by violence. &ldquo;In God&rsquo;s name then what has happened&mdash;when
+      you almost gave me your word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened is that I&rsquo;ve found it impossible to listen to you.&rdquo; And
+      she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in her
+      quick circuit of the hall. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all you&rsquo;ve got to say to me after what
+      has passed between us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her passionate
+      denial set him a limit. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to say&mdash;sorry as I am&mdash;that if
+      you <i>must</i> have an answer it&rsquo;s this: that never, Lord John, never,
+      can there be anything more between us.&rdquo; And her gesture cleared her path,
+      permitting her to achieve her flight. &ldquo;Never, no, never,&rdquo; she repeated as
+      she went&mdash;&ldquo;never, never, never!&rdquo; She got off by the door at which she
+      had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and defeated,
+      left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a chair and
+      remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the great blank
+      splendour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK SECOND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by the
+      door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person coming
+      in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr. Gotch, her
+      butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway forming opposite
+      the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample, lighted from the
+      back of the house and having its independent connection with the upper
+      floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not immediately finding the
+      visitor to whom she had been called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Mr. Crimble&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here he is, my lady.&rdquo; And he made way for that gentleman, who emerged
+      from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt withdrawal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went in for a minute, with your servant&rsquo;s permission,&rdquo; Hugh explained,
+      &ldquo;to see your famous Lawrence&mdash;which is splendid; he was so good as to
+      arrange the light.&rdquo; The young man&rsquo;s dress was of a form less relaxed than
+      on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft felt hat that he
+      rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the limit of his sacrifice
+      to vain appearances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
+      act. &ldquo;Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do&mdash;and even seems
+      to have ended by taking her for his very own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of her
+      line,&rdquo; Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement of
+      replying; &ldquo;and I must make sure of another look at her when I&rsquo;ve a good
+      deal more time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. &ldquo;You hadn&rsquo;t then come <i>for</i>
+      the poor dear?&rdquo; And then as he obviously hadn&rsquo;t, but for something quite
+      else: &ldquo;I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be coveted&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       It dropped with a yearning sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?&rdquo; Hugh asked. &ldquo;Ah, I
+      shall never do their work&mdash;unless to betray them: <i>that</i> I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t in the least mind!&mdash;and I&rsquo;m here, frankly, at this early
+      hour, to ask your consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular
+      business, if she can kindly give me time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve known then of her being with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,&rdquo; he
+      explained; &ldquo;of her wishing not to go to her sister&rsquo;s, and of Lord Theign&rsquo;s
+      having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of proceeding, to
+      some foreign part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve learnt it from having seen her&mdash;these three or four
+      weeks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve met her&mdash;but just barely&mdash;two or three times: at a
+      &lsquo;private view&rsquo; at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she
+      hasn&rsquo;t told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her
+      thick lustre. &ldquo;I wanted to see how much <i>you&rsquo;d</i> tell.&rdquo; She waited
+      even as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. &ldquo;Once again at
+      dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but alas not near her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once then at a private view?&mdash;when, with the squash they usually
+      are, you might have been very near her indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;it <i>was</i> a squash!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And once,&rdquo; his hostess pursued, &ldquo;in the lobby of the opera?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After &lsquo;Tristan&rsquo;&mdash;yes; but with some awful grand people I didn&rsquo;t
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. &ldquo;Oh, the Pennimans are nobody!
+      But now,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve come, you say, on &lsquo;business&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very important, please&mdash;which accounts for the hour I&rsquo;ve ventured
+      and the appearance I present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ask you too much to &lsquo;account,&rsquo;&rdquo; Lady Sandgate kindly said; &ldquo;but I
+      can&rsquo;t not wonder if she hasn&rsquo;t told you what things have happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast about. &ldquo;She has had no chance to tell me anything&mdash;beyond the
+      fact of her being here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without the reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The reason&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it up, going straighter. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s with me then as an old firm
+      friend. Under my care and protection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see&rdquo;&mdash;he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint
+      in respect to himself. &ldquo;She puts you on your guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. &ldquo;She puts me on my honour&mdash;or
+      at least her father does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to her seeing <i>me</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to <i>my</i> seeing at least&mdash;what may happen to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;you say&mdash;things <i>have</i> happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion fairly sounded him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve only talked&mdash;when you&rsquo;ve
+      met&mdash;of &lsquo;art&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he smiled, &ldquo;&lsquo;art is long&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord
+      Theign is presently due&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Here</i>, back already from abroad?&rdquo;&mdash;he was all alert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has not yet gone&mdash;he comes up this morning to start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And stops here on his way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To take the <i>train de luxe</i> this afternoon to his annual
+      Salsomaggiore. But with so little time to spare,&rdquo; she went on
+      reassuringly, &ldquo;that, to simplify&mdash;as he wired me an hour ago from
+      Dedborough&mdash;he has given rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is
+      particularly to wait for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who may therefore arrive at any moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her bracelet watch. &ldquo;Scarcely before noon. So you&rsquo;ll just
+      have your chance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank the powers then!&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh grasped at it. &ldquo;I shall have it best
+      if you&rsquo;ll be so good as to tell me first&mdash;well,&rdquo; he faltered, &ldquo;what
+      it is that, to my great disquiet, you&rsquo;ve further alluded to; what it is
+      that has occurred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
+      pronounced. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
+      father&rsquo;s extreme reprobation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, so much as that&mdash;that she must have greatly annoyed him&mdash;I
+      have been supposing. But isn&rsquo;t it by her having asked me to act for her? I
+      mean about the Mantovano&mdash;which I <i>have</i> done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate wondered. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve &lsquo;acted&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve come to tell her at last&mdash;and I&rsquo;m all impatience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see, I see&rdquo;&mdash;she had caught a clue. &ldquo;He hated that&mdash;yes; but
+      you haven&rsquo;t really made out,&rdquo; she put to him, &ldquo;the <i>other</i> effect of
+      your hour at Dedborough?&rdquo; She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
+      his divination had failed, and she didn&rsquo;t trouble him to confess it.
+      &ldquo;Directly you had gone she &lsquo;turned down&rsquo; Lord John. Declined, I mean, the
+      offer of his hand in marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. &ldquo;He proposed there&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had spoken, that day, <i>before</i>&mdash;before your talk with Lord
+      Theign, who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
+      Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you <i>had</i>
+      gone, for his answer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t have him?&rdquo; Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t look at
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bethought himself. &ldquo;But had she said she would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So her father indignantly considers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the <i>ground</i> of his indignation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
+      crisis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble turned this over&mdash;feeling apparently for something he
+      didn&rsquo;t find. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to hear such things, but where&rsquo;s the connection
+      with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don&rsquo;t see any&mdash;-!&rdquo; In that
+      case, Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s motion implied, she washed her hands of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
+      to guess a conundrum&mdash;which he gave up. &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t see any, Lady
+      Sandgate. But,&rdquo; he a little inconsistently said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to
+      you for telling me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mention it!&mdash;though I think it <i>is</i> good of me,&rdquo; she
+      smiled, &ldquo;on so short an acquaintance.&rdquo; To which she added more gravely: &ldquo;I
+      leave you the situation&mdash;but I&rsquo;m willing to let you know that I&rsquo;m all
+      on Grace&rsquo;s side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I, <i>rather!</i>&mdash;please let me frankly say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He clearly refreshed, he even almost charmed her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the very least you
+      can say!&mdash;though I&rsquo;m not sure whether you say it as the simplest or
+      as the very subtlest of men. But in case you don&rsquo;t know as I do how little
+      the particular candidate I&rsquo;ve named&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?&rdquo; he broke in&mdash;all quick
+      intelligence here at least. &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t perhaps know as well as you do&mdash;but
+      I think I know as well as I just yet require.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are then! And if you did prevent,&rdquo; his hostess maturely
+      pursued, &ldquo;what wouldn&rsquo;t have been&mdash;well, good or nice, I&rsquo;m quite on
+      your side too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at a
+      meaning. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of
+      effort or ingenuity&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?&rdquo;&mdash;she took his presumed
+      sense faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her
+      reply to it. &ldquo;Well, will you keep the secret of everything I&rsquo;ve said or
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she momentously returned, &ldquo;I only want, too, to make Bender
+      impossible. If you ask me,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;how I arrange that with my deep
+      loyalty to Lord Theign&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ask you anything of the sort,&rdquo; he interrupted&mdash;&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t
+      ask you for the world; and my own bright plan for achieving the <i>coup</i>
+      you mention&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time, at the most,&rdquo; she said, consulting afresh her bracelet
+      watch, &ldquo;to explain to Lady Grace.&rdquo; She reached an electric bell, which she
+      touched&mdash;facing then her visitor again with an abrupt and slightly
+      embarrassed change of tone. &ldquo;You do think <i>my</i> great portrait
+      splendid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had strayed far from it and all too languidly came back. &ldquo;Your Lawrence
+      there? As I said, magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the butler had come in, interrupting, straight from the lobby; of whom
+      she made her request. &ldquo;Let her ladyship know&mdash;Mr. Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch looked hard at Hugh and the crumpled hat&mdash;almost as if having
+      an option. But he resigned himself to repeating, with a distinctness that
+      scarce fell short of the invidious, &ldquo;Mr. Crimble,&rdquo; and departed on his
+      errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s fair flush of diplomacy had meanwhile not faded. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t
+      you, with your immense cleverness and power, get the Government to do
+      something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About your picture?&rdquo; Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment.
+      &ldquo;You too then want to sell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh she righted herself. &ldquo;Never to a private party!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s not after it?&rdquo; he asked&mdash;though scarce lighting his
+      reluctant interest with a forced smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most intensely after it. But never,&rdquo; cried the proprietress, &ldquo;to a
+      bloated alien!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;carrying that
+      magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as the
+      object itself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it you for nothing?&rdquo; She threw up shocked hands. &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m an
+      aged female pauper and can&rsquo;t make <i>every</i> sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh pretended&mdash;none too convincingly&mdash;to think. &ldquo;Will you let
+      them have it very cheap?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;for less than such a bribe as Bender&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he said expressively, &ldquo;that might be, and still&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she had a flare of fond confidence. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll find out what he&rsquo;ll
+      offer&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll on your side do what you can&mdash;and then ask them
+      a third less.&rdquo; And she followed it up&mdash;as if suddenly conceiving him
+      a prig. &ldquo;See here, Mr. Crimble, I&rsquo;ve been&mdash;and this very first time I&mdash;charming
+      to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have indeed,&rdquo; he returned; &ldquo;but you throw back on it a lurid light if
+      it has all been for <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been&mdash;well, to keep things as I want them; and if I&rsquo;ve given
+      you precious information mightn&rsquo;t you on your side&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Estimate its value in cash?&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh sharply took her up. &ldquo;Ah, Lady
+      Sandgate, I <i>am</i> in your debt, but if you really bargain for your
+      precious information I&rsquo;d rather we assume that I haven&rsquo;t enjoyed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady
+      Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the nearer
+      door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t bargain
+      with the Treasury!&rdquo;&mdash;she had passed out by the time Lady Grace
+      arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Hugh recognised in this friend&rsquo;s entrance and face the light of welcome
+      he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t
+      been able to wait, I&rsquo;ve wanted so much to tell you&mdash;I mean how I&rsquo;ve
+      just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappen-dick, who was free and
+      ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must have
+      reached some time yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. &ldquo;Ah, the dear
+      sweet thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he&rsquo;s a brick&mdash;but the question now hangs in the balance.
+      Allowing him time to have got into relation with the picture, I&rsquo;ve begun
+      to expect his wire, which will probably come to my club; but my fidget,
+      while I wait, has driven me&rdquo;&mdash;he threw out and dropped his arms in
+      expression of his soft surrender&mdash;&ldquo;well, just to do <i>this</i>: to
+      come to you here, in my fever, at an unnatural hour and uninvited, and at
+      least let you know I&rsquo;ve &lsquo;acted.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but I simply rejoice,&rdquo; Lady Grace declared, &ldquo;to be acting <i>with</i>
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you are, if you are,&rdquo; the young man cried, &ldquo;why everything&rsquo;s
+      beautiful and right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all I care for and think of now,&rdquo; she went on in her bright
+      devotion, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve only wondered and hoped!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Hugh found for it all a rapid, abundant lucidity. &ldquo;He was away from
+      home at first, and I had to wait&mdash;but I crossed last week, found him
+      and settled incoming home by Paris, where I had a grand four days&rsquo; jaw
+      with the fellows there and saw <i>their</i> great specimen of our master:
+      all of which has given him time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now his time&rsquo;s up?&rdquo; the girl eagerly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>must</i> be&mdash;and we shall see.&rdquo; But Hugh postponed that
+      question to a matter of more moment still. &ldquo;The thing is that at last I&rsquo;m
+      able to tell you how I feel the trouble I&rsquo;ve brought you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her, quickly colouring, rest grave eyes on him. &ldquo;What do you know&mdash;when
+      I haven&rsquo;t told you&mdash;about my &lsquo;trouble&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?&rdquo;&mdash;he had his
+      answer ready. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve sought asylum with this good friend from the effects
+      of your father&rsquo;s resentment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Sought asylum&rsquo; is perhaps excessive,&rdquo; Lady Grace returned&mdash;&ldquo;though
+      it wasn&rsquo;t pleasant with him after that hour, no,&rdquo; she allowed. &ldquo;And I
+      couldn&rsquo;t go, you see, to Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed, you couldn&rsquo;t go to Kitty.&rdquo; He smiled at her hard as he added:
+      &ldquo;I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is it that
+      I&rsquo;ve set you adrift&mdash;that I&rsquo;ve darkened and poisoned your days.
+      You&rsquo;re paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so
+      gallantly in my grand remonstrance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again&mdash;as
+      if accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of
+      her state. &ldquo;Why do you talk of it as &lsquo;paying&rsquo;&mdash;if it&rsquo;s all to come
+      back to my <i>being</i> paid? I mean by your blest success&mdash;if you
+      really do what you want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have your word for it,&rdquo; he searchingly said, &ldquo;that our really pulling
+      it off together will make up to you&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be ashamed if it didn&rsquo;t, for everything!&rdquo;&mdash;she took the
+      question from his mouth. &ldquo;I believe in such a cause exactly as you do&mdash;and
+      found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your faith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll help me no end,&rdquo; he said all simply and sincerely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve helped <i>me</i> already&rdquo;&mdash;that she gave him straight back.
+      And on it they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely
+      communing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very wonderful&mdash;for a girl!&rdquo; Hugh brought out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One <i>has</i> to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one&rsquo;s house,&rdquo;
+       she laughed; &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s all I am of ours&mdash;but a true and a right and
+      a straight one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glowed with his admiration. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any rate,
+      the go-by and more exactly stated her case. &ldquo;I see our situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I, Lady Grace!&rdquo; he cried with the strongest emphasis. &ldquo;And your
+      father only doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said for intelligent correction&mdash;&ldquo;he sees it, there&rsquo;s
+      nothing in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that he
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have seized. &ldquo;He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other day
+      he took as a rude protest. And any protest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any protest,&rdquo; she quickly and fully agreed, &ldquo;he takes as an offence, yes.
+      It&rsquo;s his theory that he still has rights,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;though he <i>is</i>
+      a miserable peer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he not have rights,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;when he has really everything
+      on earth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he doesn&rsquo;t even <i>know</i> that&mdash;he takes it so much for
+      granted.&rdquo; And she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to
+      explain. &ldquo;He lives all in his own world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours&mdash;quite
+      as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube.&rdquo; With which
+      Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. &ldquo;And he must be here
+      to do business to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; Lady Grace asked, &ldquo;that he&rsquo;s to meet Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and,&rdquo; her companion saw as he glanced at
+      the clock on the chimney, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only ten minutes, at best. The &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; 
+      won&rsquo;t have been good for him,&rdquo; he added&mdash;&ldquo;you doubtless have seen the
+      &lsquo;Journal&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;she was vague. &ldquo;We live by the &lsquo;Morning Post.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why our friend here didn&rsquo;t speak then,&rdquo; Hugh said with a better
+      light&mdash;&ldquo;which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn&rsquo;t do,
+      either. But they&rsquo;ve a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her
+      Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty&mdash;if we
+      don&rsquo;t do something energetic&mdash;of more and more Benders to come: such
+      a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with
+      huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to
+      the rumour current&mdash;as too horrific to believe&mdash;of Lord Theign&rsquo;s
+      putting up his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any
+      such sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and
+      momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent
+      authorities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of whom,&rdquo; said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re of
+      course seen as not the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I&rsquo;m as yet&mdash;however I&rsquo;m &lsquo;seen&rsquo;&mdash;the
+      whole collection. But we&rsquo;ve time&rdquo;&mdash;he rested on that &ldquo;The fat, if
+      you&rsquo;ll allow me the expression, is on the fire&mdash;which, as I see the
+      matter, is where this particular fat <i>should</i> be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the article, then,&rdquo; his companion appealed, &ldquo;very severe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent&mdash;and the
+      great thing is that it immensely &lsquo;marks,&rsquo; as they say. It will have made a
+      big public difference&mdash;from this day; though it&rsquo;s of course aimed not
+      so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow to
+      tackle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly&rdquo;&mdash;she was full of the saving vision; &ldquo;but as the conditions
+      are directly embodied in persons&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it bells
+      three or four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she richly brooded&mdash;&ldquo;Lady Lappington <i>is</i> a cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will have been &lsquo;belled,&rsquo; at any rate, with your father,&rdquo; Hugh
+      amusedly went on, &ldquo;to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good
+      for us&mdash;I mean for <i>us</i> in particular.&rdquo; Yet he had to bethink
+      himself. &ldquo;The case depends a good deal of course on how your father <i>takes</i>
+      such a resounding rap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know how he&rsquo;ll take it!&rdquo;&mdash;her perception went all the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the very highest and properest spirit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo; She was as brave as she was clear. &ldquo;Or at least I
+      shall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. &ldquo;You <i>are</i>, yes,
+      splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I even,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;surprise myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was already back at his calculations. &ldquo;How early do the papers get
+      to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast&mdash;which isn&rsquo;t, however, very
+      early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s what has caused his wire to Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how will such talk strike <i>him</i>?&rdquo; the girl asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought, he
+      had let it lead him to certainty. &ldquo;It will have moved Mr. Bender to
+      absolute rapture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather,&rdquo; Lady Grace wondered, &ldquo;than have put him off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have put him prodigiously <i>on!</i> Mr. Bender&mdash;as he said
+      to me at Dedborough of his noble host there,&rdquo; Hugh pursued&mdash;&ldquo;is &lsquo;a
+      very nice man&rsquo;; but he&rsquo;s a product of the world of advertisment, and
+      advertisement is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in
+      glory or a fish in water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took it from him as half doubting. &ldquo;But mayn&rsquo;t advertisement, in so
+      special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught
+      from foreign comrades. &ldquo;He rides the biggest whirlwind&mdash;he has got it
+      saddled and bitted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She faced the image, but cast about &ldquo;Then where does our success come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him.&rdquo; And
+      Hugh further pointed the moral. &ldquo;If in such proceedings all he knows is
+      publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it&rsquo;s only a question of
+      giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself, you see, he&rsquo;ll
+      have too much for every one else&mdash;so that we shall &lsquo;up&rsquo; in a body and
+      slay him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. &ldquo;But if he
+      has meanwhile got the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll slay him before he gets it!&rdquo; He revelled in the breadth of his
+      view. &ldquo;Our own policy must be to <i>organise</i> to that end the
+      inevitable outcry. Organise Bender himself&mdash;organise him to scandal.&rdquo;
+       Hugh had already even pity to spare for their victim. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t know it
+      from a boom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. &ldquo;But that
+      will be only if he wants and decides for the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must make him then want and decide for it&mdash;decide, that is, for
+      &lsquo;ours.&rsquo; To save it we must work him up&mdash;he&rsquo;ll in that case want it so
+      indecently much. Then <i>we</i> shall have to want it more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, &ldquo;you can take a
+      horse to water&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, trust me to make him drink!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There appeared a note in this that convinced her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Mr. Crimble,
+      who are &lsquo;splendid&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shall be&mdash;with my jolly wire!&rdquo; And all on that scent again,
+      &ldquo;May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick&rsquo;s news?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, rather, of course, come back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only not,&rdquo; he debated, &ldquo;till your father has left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace considered too, but sharply decided. &ldquo;Come when you <i>have</i>
+      it. But tell me first,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;one thing.&rdquo; She hung fire a little
+      while he waited, but she brought it out. &ldquo;Was it you who got the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; 
+      to speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, one scarcely &lsquo;gets&rsquo; the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who then gave them their &lsquo;tip&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the Mantovano and its peril?&rdquo; Well, he took a moment&mdash;but only
+      not to say; in addition to which the butler had reappeared, entering from
+      the lobby. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;when I come back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch had his manner of announcement while the visitor was mounting the
+      stairs. &ldquo;Mr. Breckenridge Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then I go,&rdquo; said Lady Grace at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stay three minutes.&rdquo; Hugh turned with her, alertly, to the easier
+      issue, signalling hope and cheer from that threshold as he watched her
+      disappear; after which he faced about with as brave a smile and as ready
+      for immediate action as if she had there within kissed her hand to him.
+      Mr. Bender emerged at the same instant, Gotch withdrawing and closing the
+      door behind him; and the former personage, recognising his young friend,
+      threw up his hands for friendly pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Crimble,&rdquo; he cordially inquired, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve come with your great
+      news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment. &ldquo;News
+      of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven&rsquo;t news <i>yet</i>.&rdquo; But he added
+      as with high candour for the visitor&rsquo;s motion of disappointment: &ldquo;I think
+      I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in <i>my</i> country,&rdquo; Mr. Bender returned with disgust, &ldquo;it would
+      take three or four minutes! Can&rsquo;t you make &lsquo;em step more lively?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m expecting, sir,&rdquo; said Hugh good-humouredly, &ldquo;a report from hour to
+      hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then will you let me have it right off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s scarcely for
+      you, Mr. Bender, that I&rsquo;m acting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The great collector was but briefly checked. &ldquo;Well, can&rsquo;t you just act for
+      Art?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re doing that yourself so powerfully,&rdquo; Hugh laughed, &ldquo;that I
+      think I had best leave it to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a new
+      improvement. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you want to go round acting <i>with</i> me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go &lsquo;on tour,&rsquo; as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Hugh said, &ldquo;if I had
+      any weight&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;d add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that <i>you</i>
+      should go back on me&mdash;after working me up so down there? The worst
+      I&rsquo;ve done,&rdquo; Mr. Bender continued, &ldquo;is to refuse that Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it deplorably been <i>offered</i> you?&rdquo; our young man cried,
+      unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his
+      fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving the
+      owner of the great work away: &ldquo;Then why are you&mdash;as if you were a
+      banished Romeo&mdash;so keen for news from Verona?&rdquo; To this odd mixture of
+      business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with
+      but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of tested
+      utility; so that Hugh put him another question: &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you here, sir, on
+      the chance of the Mantovano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m here,&rdquo; he then imperturbably said, &ldquo;because Lord Theign has wired me
+      to meet him. Ain&rsquo;t you here for that yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a &ldquo;big&rdquo; choice of answers.
+      &ldquo;Dear, no! I&rsquo;ve but been in, by Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s leave, to see that grand
+      Lawrence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, she&rsquo;s very kind about it&mdash;one does go &lsquo;in.&rsquo;&rdquo; After which Mr.
+      Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity.
+      &ldquo;Is any one <i>after</i> that grand Lawrence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope not,&rdquo; Hugh laughed, &ldquo;unless you again dreadfully are:
+      wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call it,&rdquo; Mr. Bender impartially inquired, &ldquo;a <i>very</i> wonderful
+      thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh spoke as for
+      the strictly aesthetic awkwardness of that. &ldquo;But you know I take my
+      pictures hard.&rdquo; He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this
+      connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. &ldquo;I must make my
+      little <i>rapport</i>.&rdquo; Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain.
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re a band of young men who care&mdash;and we watch the great things.
+      Also&mdash;for I must give you the real truth about myself&mdash;we watch
+      the great people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I&rsquo;m used to being watched&mdash;if that&rsquo;s the worst you can
+      do.&rdquo; To which Mr. Bender added in his homely way: &ldquo;But you know, Mr.
+      Crimble, what I&rsquo;m <i>really</i> after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh&rsquo;s strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. &ldquo;The man in
+      this morning&rsquo;s &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; appears at least to have discovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the man in this morning&rsquo;s &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; has discovered three or four
+      weeks&mdash;as it appears to take you here for everything&mdash;after my
+      beginning to talk. Why, they knew I was talking <i>that</i> time ago on
+      the other side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they know things in the States,&rdquo; Hugh cheerfully agreed, &ldquo;so
+      independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I haven&rsquo;t so much talked as raved,&rdquo; Mr. Bender conceded&mdash;&ldquo;for
+      I&rsquo;m afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me
+      at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the
+      echo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they&rsquo;ll make up for lost time! But have you done it,&rdquo; Hugh asked,
+      &ldquo;to prepare an alibi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An alibi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By &lsquo;raving,&rsquo; as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don&rsquo;t think you
+      at all believe you&rsquo;ll get the Sir Joshua&mdash;but meanwhile we shall have
+      cleared up the question of the Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn&rsquo;t speak till he had done justice to this
+      picture of his subtlety. &ldquo;Then, why on earth do you want to boom the
+      Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask that,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;because it&rsquo;s the boomed thing that&rsquo;s most in
+      peril.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag their
+      value to the light why shouldn&rsquo;t we want to grab them and carry them off&mdash;the
+      same as all of <i>you</i> originally did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, not quite the same,&rdquo; Hugh smiled&mdash;&ldquo;that I <i>will</i> say for
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you stick it on now&mdash;you <i>have</i> got an eye for the rise in
+      values. But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be
+      mighty glad that, to such a time, I&rsquo;ll pay it you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young man kept, during a moment&rsquo;s thought, his eyes on his companion,
+      and then resumed with all intensity and candour: &ldquo;You may easily, Mr.
+      Bender, be too much for me&mdash;as you appear too much for far greater
+      people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on <i>this</i>,
+      as to any case in which that happens&mdash;that when precious things,
+      things we are to lose here, <i>are</i> knocked down to you, you&rsquo;ll let us
+      at least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before
+      they&rsquo;re borne off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s big face fell almost with a crash. &ldquo;Hand them over, you mean,
+      to the sandwich men on Bond Street?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To one or other of the placard and poster men&mdash;I don&rsquo;t insist on the
+      inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be on
+      view for three or four weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask me,&rdquo; Mr. Bender returned, &ldquo;for a <i>general</i> assurance to that
+      effect?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, a particular one&mdash;so it be particular enough,&rdquo; Hugh said&mdash;&ldquo;will
+      do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue&mdash;well, of the
+      value that&rsquo;s actually in the scales.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Mantovano-Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Moretto-Mantovano!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t we better know which it is
+      first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. &ldquo;The public interest&mdash;playing
+      so straight on the question&mdash;may help to settle it. By which I mean
+      that it will profit enormously&mdash;the question of probability, of
+      identity itself will&mdash;by the discussion it will create. The
+      discussion will promote certainty&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And certainty,&rdquo; Mr. Bender massively mused, &ldquo;will kick up a row.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Of course</i> it will kick up a row!&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh thoroughly guaranteed
+      that. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England&mdash;if
+      you venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom it won&rsquo;t be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But whom it will be exceedingly <i>mine</i> to practise on&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      Hugh laughed as at the fun before them&mdash;&ldquo;if I may entertain the sweet
+      hope of success. The only thing is&mdash;from my point of view,&rdquo; he went
+      on&mdash;&ldquo;that backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn&rsquo;t
+      in the least in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should
+      be really too much of it for his taste or his nerves he&rsquo;ll set his
+      handsome face as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what
+      I appeal to you for will have taken place&mdash;the picture will have been
+      seen by a lot of people who&rsquo;ll care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have been seen,&rdquo; Mr. Bender amended&mdash;&ldquo;on the mere
+      contingency of my acquisition of it&mdash;only if its present owner
+      consents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Consents&rsquo;?&rdquo; Hugh almost derisively echoed; &ldquo;why, he&rsquo;ll propose it
+      himself, he&rsquo;ll insist on it, he&rsquo;ll put it through, once he&rsquo;s angry enough&mdash;as
+      angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal act of his
+      will be sure to make him; and I&rsquo;m afraid the striking criticism, or at
+      least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown on his flame of
+      bravado.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion. &ldquo;Yes,
+      I guess he&rsquo;s pretty mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve imputed to him&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense&mdash;&ldquo;an
+      intention of which after all he isn&rsquo;t guilty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that&rdquo;&mdash;his listener glowed with interested optimism&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      they don&rsquo;t look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he&rsquo;ll just go
+      and be guilty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly elated
+      by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped. &ldquo;You
+      entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh fisher in
+      troubled waters?&rdquo; And then with a finer art, as his companion, expansively
+      bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound <i>him</i>: &ldquo;The
+      strongest thing in such a type&mdash;one does make out&mdash;is his
+      resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is quite
+      that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the
+      groaning board of his banquet of life to <i>be</i> such a liberty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed
+      aristocratic illusion. &ldquo;Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes, the
+      way those of you who have got things fixed for them <i>do</i>, over here;
+      and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced
+      to the mere synthetic interjection &ldquo;My!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s it, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral;
+      &ldquo;he won&rsquo;t quit it without a hard struggle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high
+      calculation of impunity. &ldquo;Well, I guess he won&rsquo;t struggle too hard for me
+      to hold on to him if I <i>want</i> to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be,&rdquo; Hugh returned,
+      &ldquo;don&rsquo;t forget what I&rsquo;ve urged on you&mdash;the claim of our desolate
+      country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his friend had an answer to this. &ldquo;My natural interest, Mr. Crimble&mdash;considering
+      what I do for it&mdash;is in the claim of ours. But I wish you were on my
+      side!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so much,&rdquo; Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, &ldquo;as I wish you were
+      on mine!&rdquo; Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. &ldquo;Good-bye&mdash;for
+      another look here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his companion,
+      freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. &ldquo;How much is she really
+      worth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;?&rdquo; Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. &ldquo;Lady Sandgate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her great-grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A responsible answer was prevented&mdash;the butler was again with them;
+      he had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage
+      under his convoy. &ldquo;Lord John!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape.
+      &ldquo;Oh, ask <i>that</i> friend!&rdquo; With which he sought the further passage to
+      the staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch,
+      who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that
+      her ladyship would come, left them together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Theign&rsquo;s not yet here!&rdquo; Lord John had to resign himself as he
+      greeted his American ally. &ldquo;But he told me I should find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has kept me waiting,&rdquo; that gentleman returned&mdash;&ldquo;but what&rsquo;s the
+      matter with him anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter with him&rdquo;&mdash;Lord John treated such ignorance as irritating&mdash;&ldquo;must
+      of course be this beastly thing in the &lsquo;Journal.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such
+      connections. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with the beastly thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, aren&rsquo;t you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you call <i>that</i> a regular dig you can&rsquo;t have had much experience
+      of the Papers. I&rsquo;ve known them to dig much deeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had <i>no</i> experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but
+      do you mean to say,&rdquo; asked Lord John with the surprise of his own
+      delicacy, &ldquo;that you don&rsquo;t unpleasantly feel it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel it where, my dear sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All over me at once?&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. &ldquo;Well,
+      I&rsquo;m a large man&mdash;so when I want to feel so much I look out for
+      something good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine&mdash;ain&rsquo;t
+      that what you wear?&mdash;does our friend propose to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the apprehension
+      of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before them, having
+      reached them through the other room, and to her he at once referred the
+      question. &ldquo;What <i>will</i> Theign propose, do you think, Lady Sandgate,
+      to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. &ldquo;To &lsquo;do&rsquo;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know about the thing in the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo;&mdash;awfully offensive
+      all round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;d be even a little pinch for <i>you</i> in it,&rdquo; Mr. Bender said to
+      her&mdash;&ldquo;if you were bent on fitting the shoe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her
+      elder guest while she took her place with them. &ldquo;Oh, the shoes of such
+      monsters as that are much too big for poor <i>me!</i>&rdquo; But she was more
+      specific for Lord John. &ldquo;I know only what Grace has just told me; but
+      since it&rsquo;s a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly&mdash;what
+      you may call&mdash;take his stand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John welcomed this assurance. &ldquo;If I know him he&rsquo;ll take it
+      splendidly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s attention was genial, though rather more detached. &ldquo;And what&mdash;while
+      he&rsquo;s about it&mdash;will he take it particularly <i>on?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we&rsquo;ve plenty of things, thank heaven,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;for a man
+      in Theign&rsquo;s position to hold fast by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John freely confirmed it. &ldquo;Scores and scores&mdash;rather! And I will
+      say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may soon
+      become a real convenience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender seemed struck&mdash;and not unsympathetic. &ldquo;I see that your
+      system would be rather a fraud if you hadn&rsquo;t pretty well fixed <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned
+      and convinced. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t, however, alter the fact that we&rsquo;ve thus in our
+      ears the first growl of an outcry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Lord John concurred, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve unmistakably the first growl of an
+      outcry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign,
+      introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the
+      result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself. &ldquo;Why,
+      they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl of an
+      outcry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been
+      held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least that a
+      certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his lordship&rsquo;s
+      aspect would have been explained by his having taken the full measure&mdash;an
+      inner success with which he glowed&mdash;of some high provocation. He was
+      flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house; he was so admirably,
+      vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his journey, that he shone
+      as with the armour of a knight; and the whole effect of him, from head to
+      foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and every flash of his ease, was to
+      call attention to his being utterly unshaken and knowing perfectly what he
+      was about. It was at this happy pitch that he replied to the prime
+      upsetter of his peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I don&rsquo;t know what anything means to <i>you</i>, Mr. Bender&mdash;but
+      it&rsquo;s exactly to find out that I&rsquo;ve asked you, with our friend John, kindly
+      to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your good
+      leave,&rdquo; he went on to Lady Sandgate; &ldquo;at which I&rsquo;m only too pleased that
+      you yourself should assist. The &lsquo;first growl&rsquo; of any outcry, I may mention
+      to you all, affects me no more than the last will&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;m delighted to gather&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate took him straight up&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      you don&rsquo;t let go your inestimable Cure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He at first quite stared superior&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;Let go&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;but then treated
+      it with a lighter touch. &ldquo;Upon my honour I might, you know&mdash;that dose
+      of the daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate,&rdquo; he
+      pursued to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, &ldquo;I arrive with my
+      decision taken&mdash;which I&rsquo;ve thought may perhaps interest you. If that
+      tuppeny rot <i>is</i> an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John rejoicingly approved. &ldquo;Absolutely the only way&mdash;with the
+      least self-respect&mdash;to treat it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. &ldquo;But are you
+      sure it&rsquo;s so easy, Theign, to hush up a <i>real</i> noise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain&rsquo;t what I&rsquo;d call a real one, Lady Sandgate,&rdquo; Mr. Bender said; &ldquo;you
+      can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two or three mice!
+      But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will interest me to hear
+      what sort of a trap&mdash;by what you say&mdash;you propose to set for
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; his lordship replied,
+      &ldquo;the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my absolutely
+      personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin of any definite
+      report of which&mdash;in such circles!&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid I rather wonder if
+      you yourself can&rsquo;t give me a clue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. &ldquo;You
+      rather wonder if I&rsquo;ve talked of how I feel about your detaining in your
+      hands my Beautiful Duchess&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;ve already published her as &lsquo;yours&rsquo;&mdash;with your <i>power</i>
+      of publication!&rdquo; Lord Theign coldly laughed,&mdash;&ldquo;of course I trace the
+      connection!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of a
+      pang. &ldquo;Why, I haven&rsquo;t for quite a while talked of a blessed other thing&mdash;and
+      I&rsquo;m capable of growing more profane over my <i>not</i> getting her than I
+      guess any one would dare to be if I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll certainly not &lsquo;get&rsquo; her, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate, as for
+      reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; &ldquo;and even if there were a chance of
+      it don&rsquo;t you see that your way wouldn&rsquo;t be publicly to abuse our noble
+      friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. &ldquo;Oh, I guess our
+      noble friend knows I <i>have</i> to talk big about big things. You
+      understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll forgive you,&rdquo; Lord Theign civilly returned, &ldquo;all the big talk you
+      like if you&rsquo;ll now understand <i>me</i>. My retort to that hireling pack
+      shall be at once to dispose of a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what you wanted to do
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said his lordship&mdash;&ldquo;I make a difference. It&rsquo;s what you
+      wanted me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystification, however, continued. &ldquo;And you were <i>not</i>&mdash;as
+      you seemed then&mdash;willing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign waived cross-questions. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m willing <i>now</i>&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time,&rdquo; he added
+      with all authority, &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t have our Duchess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t have our Duchess!&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord John, as before the altar of
+      patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t have our Duchess!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace
+      that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet
+      sociability as she added: &ldquo;I wish he&rsquo;d tell you too, you dreadful rich
+      thing, that you can&rsquo;t have anything at all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that rigour.
+      &ldquo;Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what&mdash;as it <i>is</i>,&rdquo; Mr. Bender asked&mdash;&ldquo;becomes of my
+      unhappy grievance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t a really great capture make up to you for that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have&mdash;and
+      it depends, don&rsquo;t you see, on how you measure the size.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t you
+      like to go back there and take the measure yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. &ldquo;Look again at that
+      tottering Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, its size&mdash;as you say&mdash;isn&rsquo;t in <i>any</i> light a
+      negligible quantity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that&mdash;big as it is&mdash;it hasn&rsquo;t yet stopped growing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord
+      Theign himself meant &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more to the purpose,&rdquo; he said to Mr. Bender,
+      &ldquo;that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words the
+      very essence, of my plan of campaign&mdash;which is to put the picture at
+      once on view.&rdquo; He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. &ldquo;On
+      view as a thing definitely disposed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, I say, I say!&rdquo; cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to high
+      admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s approval was more qualified. &ldquo;But on view, dear Theign,
+      how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With one of those pushing people in Bond Street.&rdquo; And then as for the
+      crushing climax of his policy: &ldquo;As a Mantovano pure and simple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my dear man,&rdquo; she quavered, &ldquo;if it <i>isn&rsquo;t</i> one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him and he
+      let out sail. &ldquo;Lady Sand-gate, it&rsquo;s going, by all that&rsquo;s&mdash;well,
+      interesting, to <i>be</i> one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. &ldquo;You seize me? We <i>treat</i> it
+      as one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. &ldquo;We <i>treat</i> it as one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought&mdash;he
+      even gave it back larger. &ldquo;As the long-lost Number Eight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign happily seized <i>him</i>. &ldquo;That will be it&mdash;to a charm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will make them,&rdquo; Mr. Bender asked, &ldquo;madder than anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His patron&mdash;if not his client&mdash;put it more nobly. &ldquo;It will
+      markedly affirm my attitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may create all it will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if <i>you</i> don&rsquo;t mind it, <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Mr. Bender concluded.
+      But though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid
+      application of it elsewhere. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll put the thing on view right off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as the proper arrangement&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You put off your journey to <i>make</i> it?&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate at once broke
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign bethought himself&mdash;with the effect of a gracious
+      confidence in the others. &ldquo;Not if these friends will act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I guess we&rsquo;ll <i>act!</i>&rdquo; Mr. Bender declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, <i>won&rsquo;t</i> we though!&rdquo; Lord John re-echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand then I have an interest?&rdquo; Mr. Bender went on to Lord
+      Theign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship&rsquo;s irony met it. &ldquo;I accept that complication&mdash;which so
+      much simplifies!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet also have a liberty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where else would be those you&rsquo;ve taken? The point is,&rdquo; said Lord Theign,
+      &ldquo;that <i>I</i> have a show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It settled Mr. Bender. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll <i>fix</i> your show.&rdquo; He snatched up
+      his hat. &ldquo;Lord John, come right round!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the
+      whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking leave
+      of the others he gave it even his applause. &ldquo;The fellow can do anything
+      anywhere!&rdquo; And he hastily followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their
+      companion&rsquo;s enthusiasm. &ldquo;That may be true of Mr. Bender&mdash;for it&rsquo;s
+      dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the question,
+      &ldquo;I dare say a terror will help me.&rdquo; He had other business to which he at
+      once gave himself. &ldquo;And now, if you please, for that girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send her to you,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;if you can&rsquo;t stay to luncheon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve three or four things to do,&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;and I lunch with Kitty at
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She submitted in that case&mdash;but disappointedly. &ldquo;With Berkeley Square
+      then you&rsquo;ve time. But I confess I don&rsquo;t quite grasp the so odd inspiration
+      that you&rsquo;ve set those men to carry out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. &ldquo;Then it needn&rsquo;t
+      trouble you, dear&mdash;it&rsquo;s enough that I myself go straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you so very convinced it&rsquo;s straight?&rdquo;&mdash;she wouldn&rsquo;t be a bore to
+      him, but she couldn&rsquo;t not be a blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world else is it,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;when, having good reasons, one
+      acts on &lsquo;em?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have an immense array,&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;to fly so in the face of
+      Opinion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Opinion&rsquo;?&rdquo; he commented&mdash;&ldquo;I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing,
+      as I&rsquo;m taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my
+      umbrella and send it about its business.&rdquo; To which he added with more
+      reproach: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s enough to have been dished by Grace&mdash;without <i>your</i>
+      falling away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only my great affection&mdash;and
+      all that these years have been for us: <i>they</i> it is that make me wish
+      you weren&rsquo;t so proud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us&mdash;a
+      very charming matter. But &lsquo;proud&rsquo; is it you find me of the daughter who
+      does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point of
+      this. &ldquo;Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair&mdash;but are you sure
+      you can really bear to see Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seem expected indeed to bear much,&rdquo; he said with more and more of his
+      parental bitterness, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t know that I&rsquo;m yet in a funk before my
+      child. Doesn&rsquo;t she <i>want</i> to see me, with any contrition, after the
+      trick she has played me?&rdquo; And then as his companion&rsquo;s answer failed: &ldquo;In
+      spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no
+      sign of her explaining&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hostess raised her head. &ldquo;She does want to see you, I know; but you
+      must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough&mdash;when it was
+      you who declined to see <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?&rdquo;&mdash;he was
+      entirely reminiscent. &ldquo;What I recall is that even if I had condoned&mdash;that
+      evening&mdash;her deception of <i>me</i> in my folly, I still loathed, for
+      my friend&rsquo;s sake, her practical joke on poor John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. &ldquo;It was your very
+      complaint that your own appeal to her <i>became</i> an appeal from
+      herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he returned, so well he remembered, &ldquo;she was about as civil to me
+      then&mdash;picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!&mdash;as
+      that devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant
+      remarks, for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His good friend showily balanced and might have been about to reply with
+      weight; but what she in fact brought out was only: &ldquo;I see you&rsquo;re right
+      about it: I must let her speak for herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I shall greatly prefer to her speaking&mdash;as she did so
+      extraordinarily, out of the blue, at Dedborough, upon my honour&mdash;for
+      the wonderful friends she picks up: the picture-man introduced by her
+      (what was his name?) who regularly &lsquo;cheeked&rsquo; me, as I suppose he&rsquo;d call
+      it, in my own house, and whom I hope, by the way, that under this roof
+      she&rsquo;s not able to be quite so thick with!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Lady Sandgate winced at that vain dream she managed not to betray it,
+      and she had, in any embarrassment on this matter, the support, as we know,
+      of her own tried policy. &ldquo;She leads her life under this roof very much as
+      under yours; and she&rsquo;s not of an age, remember, for me to pretend either
+      to watch her movements or to control her contacts.&rdquo; Leaving him however
+      thus to perform his pleasure the charming woman had before she went an
+      abrupt change of tone. &ldquo;Whatever your relations with others, dear friend,
+      don&rsquo;t forget that <i>I&rsquo;m</i> still here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign accepted the reminder, though, the circumstances being such,
+      it scarce moved him to ecstasy. &ldquo;That you&rsquo;re here, thank heaven, is of
+      course a comfort&mdash;or would be if you understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she submissively sighed, &ldquo;if I don&rsquo;t always &lsquo;understand&rsquo; a spirit so
+      much higher than mine and a situation so much more complicated, certainly,
+      I at least always defer, I at least always&mdash;well, what can I say but
+      worship?&rdquo; And then as he remained not other than finely passive, &ldquo;The old
+      altar, Theign,&rdquo; she went on&mdash;&ldquo;and a spark of the old fire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not looked at her on this&mdash;it was as if he shrank, with his
+      preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left hand.
+      &ldquo;So I feel!&rdquo; he was, however, kind enough to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do feel!&rdquo; she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand to
+      her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; reached the
+      threshold of the other room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I smoke?&rdquo; he asked before she had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about for a
+      match. But something else occurred to him. &ldquo;You must come to Victoria.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Left alone he had a moment&rsquo;s meditation where he stood; it found issue in
+      an articulate &ldquo;Poor dear thing!&rdquo;&mdash;an exclamation marked at once with
+      patience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which,
+      waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed, finding
+      matches at last and lighting his cigarette&mdash;all with an air of
+      concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his
+      finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom&mdash;if gloom it was&mdash;dropped,
+      however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene
+      through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he jerked out at sight of her&mdash;which she had to content herself
+      with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing little
+      to qualify its dryness. &ldquo;I take it for granted that you know I&rsquo;m within a
+      couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of health.&rdquo; And then
+      as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her possession of this
+      fact: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought accordingly that before I go I should&mdash;on this
+      first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at Dedborough&mdash;like
+      to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my absence, on the
+      painfully false position in which you there placed me.&rdquo; He carried himself
+      restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness, to which her
+      stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly passive&mdash;possibly
+      indeed a trifle portentous. &ldquo;If you had plotted and planned it in
+      advance,&rdquo; he none the less firmly pursued, &ldquo;if you had acted from some
+      uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn&rsquo;t have arranged more perfectly to
+      incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and purposes, make light of
+      me and insult me.&rdquo; Even before this charge she made no sign; with her eyes
+      now attached to the ground she let him proceed. &ldquo;I had practically
+      guaranteed to our excellent, our charming friend, your favourable view of
+      his appeal&mdash;which you yourself too, remember, had left him in so
+      little doubt of!&mdash;so that, having by your performance so egregiously
+      failed him, I have the pleasure of their coming down on me for
+      explanations, for compensations, and for God knows what besides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of her
+      attention. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong; but may
+      I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as &lsquo;they&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to his
+      more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he has
+      tried to pass. &ldquo;Why, your own sister to begin with&mdash;whose interest in
+      what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise; and <i>his</i>
+      people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular, who only
+      wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, and as pleasant
+      and as clever, damn it, when all&rsquo;s said and done, as any others that are
+      likely to come your way.&rdquo; It clearly did his lordship good to work out
+      thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to him and glowed with
+      irresistible colour. &ldquo;Letting alone gallant John himself, most amiable of
+      men, about whose merits and whose claims you appear to have pretended to
+      agree with me just that you might, when he presumed, poor chap, ardently
+      to urge them, deal him with the more cruel effect that calculated blow on
+      the mouth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that in the girl&rsquo;s great gravity embarrassment had no share.
+      &ldquo;They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you&rsquo;re obliged
+      to come down on <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly&mdash;for some better satisfaction than your just moping here
+      without a sign!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a sign of what, father?&rdquo; she asked&mdash;as helpless as a lone
+      islander scanning the horizon for a sail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, the
+      predicament into which you&rsquo;ve put me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t it occurred to you in the least that you&rsquo;ve rather put <i>me</i>
+      into one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. &ldquo;I put you certainly in
+      the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlement in life&mdash;which
+      all the elements that would make for your enjoying it had every appearance
+      of successfully commending to you.&rdquo; The perfect readiness of which on his
+      lips had, like a higher wave, the virtue of lifting and dropping him to
+      still more tangible ground. &ldquo;And if I understand you aright as wishing to
+      know whether I apologise for that zeal, why you take a most preposterous
+      view of our relation as father and daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand me no better than I fear I understand you,&rdquo; Lady Grace
+      returned, &ldquo;if what you expect of me is really to take back my words to
+      Lord John.&rdquo; And then as he didn&rsquo;t answer, while their breach gaped like a
+      jostled wound, &ldquo;Have you seriously come to propose&mdash;and from <i>him</i>
+      again,&rdquo; she added&mdash;&ldquo;that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lend
+      myself to your beautiful arrangement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for his
+      dignity, not give way to passion. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come, above all, for <i>this</i>,
+      I may say, Grace: to remind you of whom you&rsquo;re addressing when you jibe at
+      me, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand&mdash;exactly as to
+      whether you judged us to have actively <i>incurred</i> your treatment of
+      our unhappy friend, to have brought it upon us, he and I, by my refusal to
+      discuss with you at such a crisis the question of my disposition of a
+      particular item of my property. I&rsquo;ve only to look at you, for that
+      matter,&rdquo; Lord Theign continued&mdash;always with a finer point and a
+      higher consistency as his rehearsal of his wrongs broadened&mdash;&ldquo;to have
+      my inquiry, as it seems to me, eloquently answered. You flounced away from
+      poor John, you took, as he tells me, &lsquo;his head off,&rsquo; just to repay me for
+      what you chose to regard as my snub on the score of your challenging my
+      entertainment of a possible purchaser; a rebuke launched at me,
+      practically, in the presence of a most inferior person, a stranger and an
+      intruder, from whom you had all the air of taking your cue for naming me
+      the great condition on which you&rsquo;d gratify my hope. Am I to understand, in
+      other words,&rdquo;&mdash;and his lordship mounted to a climax&mdash;&ldquo;that you
+      sent us about our business because I failed to gratify <i>your</i> hope:
+      that of my knocking under to your sudden monstrous pretension to lay down
+      the law for my choice of ways and means of raising, to my best
+      convenience, a considerable sum of money? You&rsquo;ll be so good as to
+      understand, once for all, that I recognise there no right of interference
+      from any quarter&mdash;and also to let that knowledge govern your
+      behaviour in my absence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had thus for some minutes waited on his words&mdash;waited even
+      as almost with anxiety for the safe conduct he might look to from some of
+      the more extravagant of them. But he at least felt at the end&mdash;if it
+      was an end&mdash;all he owed them; so that there was nothing for her but
+      to accept as achieved his dreadful felicity. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very angry with me,
+      and I hope you won&rsquo;t feel me simply &lsquo;aggravating&rsquo; if I say that, thinking
+      everything over, I&rsquo;ve done my best to allow for that. But I <i>can</i>
+      answer your question if I do answer it by saying that my discovery of your
+      possible sacrifice of one of our most beautiful things didn&rsquo;t predispose
+      me to decide in favour of a person&mdash;however &lsquo;backed&rsquo; by you&mdash;for
+      whose benefit the sacrifice was to take place. Frankly,&rdquo; the girl pushed
+      on, &ldquo;I did quite hate, for the moment, everything that might make for such
+      a mistake; and took the darkest view, let me also confess, of every one,
+      without exception, connected with it I interceded with you, earnestly, for
+      our precious picture, and you wouldn&rsquo;t on any terms <i>have</i> my
+      intercession. On top of that Lord John blundered in, without timeliness or
+      tact&mdash;and I&rsquo;m afraid that, as I hadn&rsquo;t been the least in love with
+      him even before, he did have to take the consequence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as all he
+      could possibly want. &ldquo;You recognise then that your reception of him <i>was</i>
+      purely vindictive!&mdash;the meaning of which is that unless my conduct of
+      my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens to
+      square with your superior wisdom you&rsquo;ll put me under boycott all round!
+      While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charming
+      friend&rsquo;s lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand an
+      example, what account have you to offer of the scene you made me there
+      before that fellow&mdash;your confederate, as he had all the air of being!&mdash;by
+      giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminently done with him
+      after his remarkable display, you at least were but the more determined to
+      see him keep it up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s justification, clearly, was very present to her, and not less
+      obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding every
+      side-issue, keep it very simple, &ldquo;The only account I can give you, I
+      think, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that I
+      felt&mdash;well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,
+      I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn&rsquo;t do such
+      things. I care, if you like, to indiscretion&mdash;I care, if you like, to
+      offence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you before
+      you leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I&rsquo;m ready to cry out
+      to you that you oughtn&rsquo;t, you oughtn&rsquo;t, you oughtn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,
+      checked her as in an act really of violence&mdash;save that, like an
+      inflamed young priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her
+      message. &ldquo;Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter&mdash;no &lsquo;crying
+      out,&rsquo; if you please!&rdquo; After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still
+      kept her lighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a
+      minute, inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections,
+      taking, as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new
+      strange measure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a
+      difference of tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had
+      supposed, so that the case might really call for some coolness. &ldquo;You keep
+      bad company, Grace&mdash;it pays the devil with your sense of proportion.
+      If you make this row when I sell a picture, what will be left to you when
+      I forge a cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had arrived at the necessity of forging a cheque,&rdquo; she answered,
+      &ldquo;I should then resign myself to that of your selling a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not short of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not short of that. Not one of ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said his lordship with his best and coldest amusement,
+      &ldquo;sell one of somebody else&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was, however, not disconcerted. &ldquo;Other people do other things&mdash;they
+      appear to have done them, and to be doing them, all about us. But <i>we</i>
+      have been so decently different&mdash;always and ever. We&rsquo;ve never done
+      anything disloyal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Disloyal&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;he was more largely amazed and even interested now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace stuck to her word. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what it seems to <i>me!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to you&rdquo;&mdash;and his sarcasm here was easy&mdash;&ldquo;more disloyal
+      to sell a picture than to buy one? Because we didn&rsquo;t paint &lsquo;em all
+      ourselves, you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw up impatient hands. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ask you either to paint or to buy&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>that&rsquo;s</i> a mercy!&rdquo; he interrupted, riding his irony hard; &ldquo;and
+      I&rsquo;m glad to hear you at least let me off <i>such</i> efforts! However, if
+      it strikes you as gracefully filial to apply to your father&rsquo;s conduct so
+      invidious a word,&rdquo; he went on less scathingly, &ldquo;you must take from him, in
+      your turn, his quite other view of what makes disloyalty&mdash;understanding
+      distinctly, by the same token, that he enjoins on you not to give an
+      odious illustration of it, while he&rsquo;s away, by discussing and deploring
+      with any <i>one</i> of your extraordinary friends any aspect or feature
+      whatever of his walk and conversation. That&mdash;pressed as I am for
+      time,&rdquo; he went on with a glance at his watch while she remained silent&mdash;&ldquo;is
+      the main sense of what I have to say to you; so that I count on your
+      perfect conformity. When you have told me that I <i>may</i> so count&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      casting about for his hat he espied it and went to take it up&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      shall more cordially bid you good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter looked as if she had been for some time expecting the law
+      thus imposed upon her&mdash;had been seeing where he must come out; but in
+      spite of this preparation she made him wait for his reply in such tension
+      as he had himself created. &ldquo;To Kitty I&rsquo;ve practically said nothing&mdash;and
+      she herself can tell you why: I&rsquo;ve in fact scarcely seen her this
+      fortnight. Putting aside then Amy Sandgate, the only person to whom I&rsquo;ve
+      spoken&mdash;of your &lsquo;sacrifice,&rsquo; as I suppose you&rsquo;ll let me call it?&mdash;is
+      Mr. Hugh Crimble, whom you talk of as my &lsquo;confederate&rsquo; at Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign recovered the name with relief. &ldquo;Mr. Hugh Crimble&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      it!&mdash;whom you so amazingly caused to be present, and apparently
+      invited to be active, at a business that so little concerned him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He certainly took upon himself to be interested, as I had hoped he would.
+      But it was because I had taken upon <i>my</i> self&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To act, yes,&rdquo; Lord Theign broke in, &ldquo;with the grossest want of delicacy!
+      Well, it&rsquo;s from that exactly that you&rsquo;ll now forbear; and &lsquo;interested&rsquo; as
+      he may be&mdash;for which I&rsquo;m deucedly obliged to him!&mdash;you&rsquo;ll not
+      speak to Mr. Crimble again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again?&rdquo;&mdash;the girl put it as for full certitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never of the question that I thus exclude. You may chatter your fill,&rdquo;
+       said his lordship curtly, &ldquo;about any others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the particular question you forbid,&rdquo; Grace returned with great
+      force, but as if saying something very reasonable&mdash;&ldquo;that question is
+      <i>the</i> question we care about: it&rsquo;s our very ground of conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; her father decreed, &ldquo;your conversation will please to <i>dispense</i>
+      with a ground; or you&rsquo;ll perhaps, better still&mdash;if that&rsquo;s the only
+      way!&mdash;dispense with your conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace took a moment as if to examine this more closely. &ldquo;You require
+      of me not to communicate with Mr. Crimble at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most assuredly I require it&mdash;since it&rsquo;s to that you insist on
+      reducing me.&rdquo; He didn&rsquo;t look reduced, the master of Dedborough, as he
+      spoke&mdash;which was doubtless precisely because he held his head so high
+      to affirm what he suffered. &ldquo;Is it so essential to your comfort,&rdquo; he
+      demanded, &ldquo;to hear him, or to make him, abuse me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Abusing&rsquo; you, father dear, has nothing whatever to do with it!&rdquo;&mdash;his
+      daughter had fairly lapsed, with a despairing gesture, to the tenderness
+      involved in her compassion for his perversity. &ldquo;We look at the thing in a
+      much larger way,&rdquo; she pursued, not heeding that she drew from him a sound
+      of scorn for her &ldquo;larger.&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s of our Treasure itself we talk&mdash;and
+      of what can be <i>done</i> in such cases; though with a close application,
+      I admit, to the case that you embody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked as with absurd curiosity, &ldquo;I embody a case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderfully, father&mdash;as you do everything; and it&rsquo;s the fact of its
+      being exceptional,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;that makes it so difficult to deal
+      with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship had a gape for it. &ldquo;&lsquo;To deal with&rsquo;? You&rsquo;re undertaking to
+      &lsquo;deal&rsquo; with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled more frankly now, as for a rift in the gloom. &ldquo;Well, how can we
+      help it if you <i>will</i> be a case?&rdquo; And then as her tone but visibly
+      darkened his wonder: &ldquo;What we&rsquo;ve set our hearts on is saving the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you&rsquo;ve set your hearts on, in other words, is working straight
+      against me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she persisted without heat. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;ve set our hearts on is working
+      for England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray who in the world&rsquo;s &lsquo;England,&rsquo;&rdquo; he cried in his stupefaction,
+      &ldquo;unless I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear father,&rdquo; she pleaded, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s all we <i>want</i> you to be! I
+      mean&rdquo;&mdash;she didn&rsquo;t fear firmly to force it home&mdash;&ldquo;in the real,
+      the right, the grand sense; the sense that, you see, is so intensely
+      ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ours&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;he couldn&rsquo;t but again throw back her word at her. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t
+      it, damn you, just <i>in</i> ours&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she interrupted&mdash;&ldquo;not in <i>ours!</i>&rdquo; She smiled at him
+      still, though it was strained, as if he really ought to perceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he glared as at a senseless juggle. &ldquo;What and who the devil are you
+      talking about? What are &lsquo;we,&rsquo; the whole blest lot of us, pray, but the
+      best and most English thing in the country: people walking&mdash;and
+      riding!&mdash;straight; doing, disinterestedly, most of the difficult and
+      all the thankless jobs; minding their own business, above all, and
+      expecting others to mind theirs?&rdquo; So he let her &ldquo;have&rdquo; the stout sound
+      truth, as it were&mdash;and so the direct force of it clearly might, by
+      his view, have made her reel. &ldquo;You and I, my lady, and your two decent
+      brothers, God be thanked for them, and mine into the bargain, and all the
+      rest, the jolly lot of us, take us together&mdash;make us numerous enough
+      without any foreign aid or mixture: if that&rsquo;s what I understand you to
+      mean!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand me at all&mdash;evidently; and above all I see you
+      don&rsquo;t want to!&rdquo; she had the bravery to add, &ldquo;By &lsquo;our&rsquo; sense of what&rsquo;s due
+      to the nation in such a case I mean Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s and mine&mdash;and
+      nobody&rsquo;s else at all; since, as I tell you, it&rsquo;s only with him I&rsquo;ve
+      talked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave him then, every inch of him showed, the full, the grotesque
+      measure of the scandal he faced. &ldquo;So that &lsquo;you and Mr. Crimble&rsquo; represent
+      the standard, for me, in your opinion, of the proprieties and duties of
+      our house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, she was too earnest&mdash;as she clearly wished to let him see&mdash;to
+      mind his perversion of it. &ldquo;I express to you the way we feel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s most striking to hear, certainly, what you express&rdquo;&mdash;he had
+      positively to laugh for it; &ldquo;and you speak of him, with your insufferable
+      &lsquo;we,&rsquo; as if you were presenting him as your&mdash;God knows what! You&rsquo;ve
+      enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to have arrived at such
+      unanimity.&rdquo; And then, as if to fall into no trap he might somehow be
+      laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebutted nothing: &ldquo;You must
+      see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be able to speak of yourself
+      without him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;re fellow-critics, father&rdquo;&mdash;she accepted this opening. &ldquo;I
+      perfectly adopt your term.&rdquo; But it took her a minute to go further. &ldquo;I saw
+      Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saw him &lsquo;here&rsquo;?&rdquo; Lord Theign amazedly asked. &ldquo;He <i>comes</i> to you here&mdash;and
+      Amy Sandgate has been silent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t her business to tell you&mdash;since, you see, she could leave
+      it to me. And I quite expect,&rdquo; Lady Grace then produced, &ldquo;that he&rsquo;ll come
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It brought down with a bang all her father&rsquo;s authority. &ldquo;Then I simply
+      exact of you that you don&rsquo;t see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimming
+      cup. &ldquo;Is that what you <i>really</i> meant by your condition just now&mdash;that
+      when I do see him I shall not speak to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I &lsquo;really meant&rsquo; is what I really mean&mdash;that you bow to the law
+      I lay upon you and drop the man altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have nothing to do with him at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have nothing to do with him at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact&rdquo;&mdash;she took it in&mdash;&ldquo;give him wholly up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an impatient gesture. &ldquo;You sound as if I asked you to give up a
+      fortune!&rdquo; And then, though she had phrased his idea without consternation&mdash;verily
+      as if it had been in the balance for her&mdash;he might have been moved by
+      something that gathered in her eyes. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re so wrapped up in him that the
+      precious sacrifice is like <i>that</i> sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace took her time&mdash;but showed, as her eyes continued to hold
+      him, what <i>had</i> gathered. &ldquo;I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father&mdash;I
+      think him clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants&mdash;I want it,
+      I think, really, as much; and I don&rsquo;t at all deny that he has helped to
+      make me so want it. But that doesn&rsquo;t matter. I&rsquo;ll wholly cease to see him,
+      I&rsquo;ll give him up forever, if&mdash;if&mdash;!&rdquo; She faltered, however, she
+      hung fire with a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she began
+      and stopped again, &ldquo;If&mdash;if&mdash;!&rdquo; while her father caught her up
+      with irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;If,&rsquo; my lady? If <i>what</i>, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender&mdash;and never
+      make another to any one else!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood staring as at the size of it&mdash;then translated it into his
+      own terms. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ll obligingly announce to the world that I&rsquo;ve made an ass
+      of myself you&rsquo;ll kindly forbear from your united effort&mdash;the charming
+      pair of you&mdash;to show me up for one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this,
+      simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn&rsquo;t till
+      a minute passed that she said: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t agree to my compromise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of his
+      spirit. &ldquo;Good God, I&rsquo;m to &lsquo;compromise&rsquo; on top of everything?&mdash;I&rsquo;m to
+      let you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I&rsquo;m
+      entitled to settle with you as things have ever <i>been</i> settled among
+      us, by uttering to you my last parental word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t care enough then for what you name?&rdquo;&mdash;she took it up as
+      scarce heeding now what he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For putting an end to your odious commerce&mdash;? I give you the
+      measure, on the contrary,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;of how much I care: as you
+      give me, very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       But his other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which he
+      broke off in turn as for disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with an effect of decently shielding herself&mdash;the unuttered
+      meaning came so straight&mdash;that she substituted words of her own. &ldquo;Of
+      what it costs me to redeem the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To lose your tenth-rate friend&rdquo;&mdash;he spoke without scruple now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She instantly broke into ardent deprecation, pleading at once and warning.
+      &ldquo;Father, father, oh&mdash;! You hold the thing in your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled up before her again as to thrust the responsibility straight
+      back. &ldquo;My orders then are so much rubbish to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace held her ground, and they remained face to face in opposition
+      and accusation, neither making the other the sign of peace. But the girl
+      at least <i>had</i>, in her way, held out the olive-branch, while Lord
+      Theign had but reaffirmed his will. It was for her acceptance of this that
+      he searched her, her last word not having yet come. Before it had done so,
+      however, the door from the lobby opened and Mr. Gotch had regained their
+      presence. This appeared to determine in Lady Grace a view of the
+      importance of delay, which she signified to her companion in a &ldquo;Well&mdash;I
+      must think!&rdquo; For the butler positively resounded, and Hugh was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble!&rdquo; Mr. Gotch proclaimed&mdash;with the further extravagance of
+      projecting the visitor straight upon his lordship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our young man showed another face than the face his friend had lately seen
+      him carry off, and he now turned it distressfully from that source of
+      inspiration to Lord Theign, who was flagrantly, even from this first
+      moment, no such source at all, and then from his noble adversary back
+      again, under pressure of difficulty and effort, to Lady Grace, whom he
+      directly addressed. &ldquo;Here I am again, you see&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got my news,
+      worse luck!&rdquo; But his manner to her father was the next instant more brisk.
+      &ldquo;I learned you were here, my lord; but as the case is important I told
+      them it was all right and came up. I&rsquo;ve been to my club,&rdquo; he added for the
+      girl, &ldquo;and found the tiresome thing&mdash;!&rdquo; But he broke down breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it isn&rsquo;t good?&rdquo; she cried with the highest concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruefully, yet not abjectly, he confessed, &ldquo;Not so good as I hoped. For I
+      assure you, my lord, I counted&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the report from Pappendick about the picture at Verona,&rdquo; Lady Grace
+      interruptingly explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh took it up, but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassment
+      dismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showing
+      thus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any reviving
+      possibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. &ldquo;The man I
+      told <i>you</i> about also,&rdquo; he said to his formidable patron; &ldquo;whom I
+      went to Brussels to talk with and who, most kindly, has gone for us to
+      Verona. He has been able to get straight at <i>their</i> Mantovano, but
+      the brute horribly wires me that he doesn&rsquo;t quite see the thing; see, I
+      mean&rdquo;&mdash;and he gathered his two hearers together now in his overflow
+      of chagrin, conscious, with his break of the ice, more exclusively of that&mdash;&ldquo;my
+      vivid vital point, the absolute screaming identity of the two persons
+      represented. I still hold,&rdquo; he persuasively went on, &ldquo;that our man is
+      their man, but Pappendick decides that he isn&rsquo;t&mdash;and as Pappendick
+      has so <i>much</i> to be reckoned with of course I&rsquo;m awfully abashed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had remained what he had begun by being, immeasurably and
+      inaccessibly detached&mdash;only with his curiosity more moved than he
+      could help and as, on second thought, to see what sort of a still more
+      offensive fool the heated youth would really make of himself. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;you
+      seem indeed remarkably abashed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh clearly was thrown again, by the cold &ldquo;cut&rdquo; of this, colder than any
+      mere social ignoring, upon a sense of the damnably poor figure he did
+      offer; so that, while he straightened himself and kept a mastery of his
+      manner and a control of his reply, we should yet have felt his cheek
+      tingle. &ldquo;I backed my own judgment strongly, I know&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got my
+      snub. But I don&rsquo;t in the least knock under.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the first authority in Europe doesn&rsquo;t care, I suppose, whether you
+      do or not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t <i>the</i> first authority in Europe, thank God,&rdquo; the young man
+      returned&mdash;&ldquo;though he is, I admit, one of the three or four first. And
+      I mean to appeal&mdash;I&rsquo;ve another shot in my locker,&rdquo; he went on with
+      his rather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. &ldquo;I had already written,
+      you see, to dear old Bardi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bardi of Milan?&rdquo;&mdash;she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the
+      appeal of his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament
+      was also for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken
+      without her father&rsquo;s presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any one to
+      perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. &ldquo;You know of him?&mdash;how
+      delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel,&rdquo; he quickly explained,
+      &ldquo;he must have <i>most</i> the instinct&mdash;and it has come over me since
+      that he&rsquo;d have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowing the
+      Verona picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had fairly hung on his lips. &ldquo;But does he know ours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not ours yet. That is&rdquo;&mdash;he consciously and quickly took
+      himself up&mdash;&ldquo;not yours! But as Pap-pendick went to Verona for us I&rsquo;ve
+      asked Bardi to do us the great favour to come here&mdash;if Lord Theign
+      will be so good,&rdquo; he said, bethinking himself with a turn, &ldquo;as to let him
+      examine the Moretto.&rdquo; He faced again to the personage he mentioned, who,
+      simply standing off and watching, in concentrated interest as well as
+      detachment, this interview of his cool daughter and her still cooler
+      guest, had plainly &ldquo;elected,&rdquo; as it were, to give them rope to hang
+      themselves. Staring very hard at Hugh he met his appeal, but in a silence
+      clearly calculated; against which, however, the young man, bearing up,
+      made such head as he could. He offered his next word, that is, equally to
+      the two companions. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not at all impossible&mdash;for such curious
+      effects have been!&mdash;that the Dedborough picture seen <i>after</i> the
+      Verona will point a different moral from the Verona seen after the
+      Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so awfully <i>long</i> after&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; Lady Grace asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully long after&mdash;it was years ago that Pappen-dick, being in this
+      country for such purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when none of
+      you were there, or at least visible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh of course we don&rsquo;t see <i>every one!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;she heroically kept it
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t see every one,&rdquo; Hugh bravely laughed, &ldquo;and that makes it all
+      the more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shall
+      really get Bardi,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;to go again to Verona&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last thing before coming here?&rdquo;&mdash;she had guessed before he could
+      say it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her for
+      assent. &ldquo;How happy they should like so to work for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we&rsquo;re a band of brothers,&rdquo; he returned&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;we few, we happy few&rsquo;&mdash;from
+      country to country&rdquo;; to which he added, gaining more ease for an eye at
+      Lord Theign: &ldquo;though we do have our little rubs and disputes, like
+      Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping <i>interest</i>
+      of it all; since,&rdquo; he developed and explained, for his elder friend&rsquo;s
+      benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially at least
+      recovered, &ldquo;when we&rsquo;re really &lsquo;hit&rsquo; over a case we&rsquo;ll do almost anything
+      in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediately
+      appropriated what her father let alone. &ldquo;It must be so lovely to <i>feel</i>
+      so hit!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does spoil one,&rdquo; Hugh laughed, &ldquo;for milder joys. Of course what I have
+      to consider is the chance&mdash;putting it at the <i>merest</i> chance&mdash;of
+      Bardi&rsquo;s own wet blanket! But that&rsquo;s again so very small&mdash;though,&rdquo; he
+      pulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as an
+      almost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll retort upon me naturally
+      that I promised you the possibility of Pappendick&rsquo;s veto would be: all on
+      the poor dear old basis, you&rsquo;ll claim, of the wish father to the thought.
+      Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Only give me time!&rdquo;
+       he sublimely insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can we prevent your using it?&rdquo; Lady Grace again interrupted; &ldquo;or the
+      fact either that if the worst comes to the worst&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing&rdquo;&mdash;he at once pursued&mdash;&ldquo;will always be at the least
+      the greatest of Morettos? Ah,&rdquo; he cried so cheerily that there was still a
+      freedom in it toward any it might concern, &ldquo;the worst sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t come to the
+      worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is that
+      supports me in the deep regret I have to express&rdquo;&mdash;and he faced Lord
+      Theign again&mdash;&ldquo;for any inconvenience I may have caused you by my
+      abortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yet more
+      than make up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, after the longest but the blankest contemplation of him,
+      broke hereupon, for the first time, that attitude of completely sustained
+      and separate silence which he had yet made compatible with his air of
+      having deeply noted every element of the scene&mdash;so that it was of
+      this full view his participation had effectively consisted, &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the
+      least idea, sir, what you&rsquo;re talking about!&rdquo; And he squarely turned his
+      back, strolling toward the other room, the threshold of which he the next
+      moment had passed, remaining scantily within, however, and in sight of the
+      others, not to say of ourselves; even though averted and ostensibly lost
+      in some scrutiny that might have had for its object the great enshrined
+      Lawrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, the richest
+      of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided by the width
+      of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then used for their
+      own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now over Hugh&rsquo;s
+      unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he must at once
+      act. Lady Grace&rsquo;s young arms conveyed to him by a despairing contrite
+      motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could do in his
+      presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to leave
+      the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair, for their
+      full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged, the charged give
+      and take of their gaze and, it might well have been imagined, of their
+      passion. Hugh had for an instant a show of hesitation&mdash;of the
+      arrested impulse, while he kept her father within range, to launch at that
+      personage before going some final remonstrance. It was the girl&rsquo;s raised
+      hand and gesture of warning that waved away for him such a mistake; he
+      decided, under her pressure, and after a last searching and answering look
+      at her reached the door and let himself out. The stillness was then
+      prolonged a minute by the further wait of the two others, Lord Theign
+      where he had been standing and his daughter on the spot from which she had
+      not moved. It presently ended in his lordship&rsquo;s turn about as if inferring
+      by the silence that the intruder had withdrawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that young man your lover?&rdquo; he said as he drew again near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had been
+      prepared. &ldquo;Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short time ago
+      demanded of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy with
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that if he <i>should</i> be&mdash;what you ask me about&mdash;your
+      exaction would then be modified?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the
+      contrary,&rdquo; Lord Theign pronounced, &ldquo;rest on an immense new ground.
+      Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t the truth be before you, father, if you&rsquo;ll <i>think</i> a moment&mdash;without
+      extravagance?&rdquo; After which, while, as stiffly as ever&mdash;and it
+      probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly&mdash;he didn&rsquo;t rise to it,
+      she went on: &ldquo;If I <i>offered</i> you not again to see him, does that make
+      for you the appearance&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you offered it, you mean, on your condition&mdash;my promising not to
+      sell? I promised,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;absolutely nothing at all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took him up with all expression. &ldquo;So I promised as little! But that I
+      should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your
+      curiosity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see <i>how</i>
+      wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. &ldquo;You risked your
+      offer for the great equivalent over which you&rsquo;ve so wildly worked yourself
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve worked myself&mdash;that, I grant you and don&rsquo;t blush for! But
+      hardly so much as to renounce my &lsquo;lover&rsquo;&mdash;if,&rdquo; she prodigiously
+      smiled, &ldquo;I were so fortunate as to have one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You renounced poor John mightily easily&mdash;whom you were so fortunate
+      as to have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. &ldquo;Do you call Lord John my
+      lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was your suitor most assuredly,&rdquo; Lord Theign inimitably said, though
+      without looking at her; &ldquo;and as strikingly encouraged as he was
+      respectfully ardent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Encouraged by <i>you</i>, dear father, beyond doubt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Encouraged&mdash;er&mdash;by every one: because you were (yes, you <i>were!</i>)
+      encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour as to
+      whether you didn&rsquo;t, on your honour, turn him off because of your just then
+      so stimulated views on the person who has been with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than she could
+      say&mdash;moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, by other
+      things than harshness: &ldquo;Oh father, father, father&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared to
+      give way to her sincerity. &ldquo;Well then if I <i>have</i> your denial I take
+      it as answering my whole question&mdash;in a manner that satisfies me. If
+      there&rsquo;s nothing, on your word, of that sort between you, you can all the
+      more drop him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the other case&mdash;that
+      of there <i>being</i> something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He brushed away her logic-chopping. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re so keen then for past
+      remarks I take up your own words&mdash;I accept your own terms for your
+      putting an end to Mr. Crimble.&rdquo; To which, while, turning pale, she said
+      nothing, he added: &ldquo;You recognise that you profess yourself ready&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not again to see him,&rdquo; she now answered, &ldquo;if you tell me the picture&rsquo;s
+      safe? Yes, I recognise that I <i>was</i> ready&mdash;as well as how
+      scornfully little you then were!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what I then was&mdash;the question&rsquo;s of what I actually am,
+      since I close with you on it The picture&rsquo;s therefore as safe as you
+      please,&rdquo; Lord Theign pursued, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;ll do what you just now engaged to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I engaged to do nothing,&rdquo; she replied after a pause; and the face she
+      turned to him had grown suddenly tragic. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no word to take back, for
+      none passed between us; but I <i>won&rsquo;t</i> do what I mentioned and what
+      you at once laughed at Because,&rdquo; she finished, &ldquo;the case is different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Different?&rdquo; he almost shouted&mdash;&ldquo;<i>how</i>, different?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She didn&rsquo;t look at him for it, but she was none the less strongly distinct
+      &ldquo;He has <i>been</i> here&mdash;and that has done it He knows,&rdquo; she
+      admirably emphasised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knows what I think of him, no doubt&mdash;for a brazen young
+      prevaricator! But what else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. &ldquo;What he will have seen&mdash;that
+      I feel we&rsquo;re too good friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your denial of it&rsquo;s false,&rdquo; her father fairly thundered&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      you <i>are</i> infatuated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her the more quiet. &ldquo;I like him very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that your row about the picture,&rdquo; he demanded with passion, &ldquo;has been
+      all a blind?&rdquo; And then as her quietness still held her: &ldquo;And his a blind
+      as much&mdash;to help him to get <i>at</i> you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him again now. &ldquo;He must speak for himself. I&rsquo;ve said what I
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what the devil <i>do</i> you mean?&rdquo; Lord Theign, taking in the hour,
+      had reached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense
+      of time lamentably lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and, hurried
+      and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand a minute. Then
+      she let everything go. &ldquo;Do what you like with the picture!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at his
+      face, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done with her
+      now and immediately lost to sight. Left alone she stood a moment looking
+      before her; then with a vague advance, held apparently by a quickly
+      growing sense of the implication of her act, reached a table where she
+      remained a little, deep afresh in thought&mdash;only the next thing to
+      fall into a chair close to it and there, with her elbows on it, yield to
+      the impulse of covering her flushed face with her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK THIRD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HUGH CRIMBLE waited again in the Bruton Street drawing-room&mdash;this
+      time at the afternoon hour; he restlessly shifted his place, looked at
+      things about him without seeing them; all he saw, all he outwardly
+      studied, was his own face and figure as he stopped an instant before a
+      long glass suspended between two windows. Just as he turned from that
+      brief and perhaps not wholly gratified inspection Lady Grace&mdash;that he
+      had sent up his name to whom was immediately apparent&mdash;presented
+      herself at the entrance from the other room. These young persons had
+      hereupon no instant exchange of words; their exchange was mute&mdash;they
+      but paused where they were; while the silence of each evidently tested the
+      other for full confidence. A measure of this comfort came first, it would
+      have appeared, to Hugh; though he then at once asked for confirmation of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I right, Lady Grace, am I right?&mdash;to have <i>come</i>, I mean,
+      after so many days of not hearing, not knowing, and perhaps, all too
+      stupidly, not trying.&rdquo; And he went on as, still with her eyes on him, she
+      didn&rsquo;t speak; though, only, we should have guessed, from her stress of
+      emotion. &ldquo;Even if I&rsquo;m wrong, let me tell you, I don&rsquo;t care&mdash;simply
+      because, whatever new difficulty I may have brought about for you here a
+      fortnight ago, there&rsquo;s something that to-day adds to my doubt and my fear
+      too great a pang, and that has made me feel I can scarce bear the suspense
+      of them as they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came nearer, and if her grave face expressed a pity it yet
+      declined a dread. &ldquo;Of what suspense do you speak? Your still being without
+      the other opinion&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that worries me, yes; and all the more, at this hour, as I say, that&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He dropped it, however: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a moment! My <i>real</i>
+      torment, all the while, has been not to know, from day to day, what
+      situation, what complication that last scene of ours with your father here
+      has let you in for; and yet at the same time&mdash;having no sign nor
+      sound from you!&mdash;to see the importance of not making anything
+      possibly worse by approaching you again, however discreetly. I&rsquo;ve been in
+      the dark,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;and feeling that I must leave <i>you</i> there; so
+      that now&mdash;just brutally turning up once more under personal need and
+      at any cost&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know whether I most want or most fear what I may
+      learn from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, listening and watching, appeared to choose between different
+      ways of meeting this appeal; she had a pacifying, postponing gesture,
+      marked with a beautiful authority, a sign of the value for her of what she
+      gave precedence to and which waved off everything else. &ldquo;Have you had&mdash;first
+      of all&mdash;any news yet of Bardi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I have is what has driven me straight <i>at</i> you again&mdash;since
+      I&rsquo;ve shown you before how I turn to you at a crisis. He has come as I
+      hoped and like a regular good &lsquo;un,&rdquo; Hugh was able to state; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just met
+      him at the station, but I pick him up again, at his hotel in Clifford
+      Street, at five. He stopped, on his way from Dover this morning, to my
+      extreme exasperation, to &lsquo;sample&rsquo; Canterbury, and I leave him to a bath
+      and a change and tea. Then swooping down I whirl him round to Bond Street,
+      where his very first apprehension of the thing (an apprehension, oh I
+      guarantee you, so quick and clean and fine and wise) will be the
+      flash-light projected&mdash;well,&rdquo; said the young man, to wind up
+      handsomely, but briefly and reasonably, &ldquo;over the whole field of our
+      question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She panted with comprehension. &ldquo;That of the two portraits being but the
+      one sitter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That of the two portraits being but the one sitter. With everything so to
+      the good, more and more, that bangs in, up to the head, the golden nail of
+      authenticity, and&rdquo;&mdash;he quite glowed through his gloom for it&mdash;&ldquo;we
+      take our stand in glory on the last Mantovano in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a presumption his friend visibly yearned for&mdash;but over which,
+      too, with her eyes away from him, she still distinguished the shadow of a
+      cloud. &ldquo;That is if the flash-light comes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is if it comes indeed, confound it!&rdquo;&mdash;he had to enlarge a
+      little under the recall of past experience. &ldquo;So now, at any rate, you see
+      my tension!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him again as with a vision too full for a waste of words.
+      &ldquo;While you on your side of course keep well in view Mr. Bender&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, while I keep well in view Mr. Bender&rsquo;s; though he doesn&rsquo;t know, you
+      see, of Bardi&rsquo;s being at hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still,&rdquo; said the girl, always all lucid for the case, &ldquo;if the
+      &lsquo;flash-light&rsquo; does presently break&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will first take him in the eye?&rdquo; Hugh had jumped to her idea, but he
+      adopted it only to provide: &ldquo;It might if he didn&rsquo;t now wear goggles, so to
+      say!&mdash;clapped on him too hard by Pappendick&rsquo;s so damnably perverse
+      opinion.&rdquo; With which, however, he quickly bethought himself. &ldquo;Ah, of
+      course, these wretched days, you haven&rsquo;t known of Pappendick&rsquo;s personal
+      visit. After that wire from Verona I wired him back defiance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that brought him?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do the honest thing, yes&mdash;I <i>will</i> say for him: to renew,
+      for full assurance, his early memory of our picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hung upon it. &ldquo;But only to stick then to what he had telegraphed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To declare that for <i>him</i>, lackaday! our thing&rsquo;s a pure Moretto&mdash;and
+      to declare as much, moreover, with all the weight of his authority, to
+      Bender himself, who of course made a point of seeing him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that Bender&rdquo;&mdash;she followed and wondered&mdash;&ldquo;is, as a
+      consequence, wholly off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her friend&rsquo;s humour play up in his acute-ness. &ldquo;Bender, Lady
+      Grace, is, by the law of his being, never &lsquo;wholly&rsquo; off&mdash;or on!&mdash;anything.
+      He lives, like the moon, in mid-air, shedding his silver light on earth;
+      never quite gone, yet never <i>all</i> there&mdash;save for inappreciable
+      moments. He <i>would</i> be in eclipse as a peril, I grant,&rdquo; Hugh went on&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      the question had struck him as really closed. But luckily the blessed
+      Press&mdash;which is a pure heavenly joy and now quite immense on it&mdash;keeps
+      it open as wide as Piccadilly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which makes, however,&rdquo; Lady Grace discriminated, &ldquo;for the danger of a
+      grab.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but all the more for the shame of a surrender! Of course I admit that
+      when it&rsquo;s a question of a life spent, like his, in waiting, acquisitively,
+      for the cat to jump, the only thing for one, at a given moment, as against
+      that signal, is to be found one&rsquo;s self by the animal in the line of its
+      trajectory. That&rsquo;s exactly,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;where we are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast about as intelligently to note the place. &ldquo;Your great idea, you
+      mean, <i>has</i> so worked&mdash;with the uproar truly as loud as it has
+      seemed to come to us here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All beyond my wildest hope,&rdquo; Hugh returned; &ldquo;since the sight of the
+      picture, flocked to every day by thousands, so beautifully <i>tells</i>.
+      That we must at any cost keep it, that the nation must, and hang on to it
+      tight, is the cry that fills the air&mdash;to the tune of ten letters a
+      day in the Papers, with every three days a gorgeous leader; to say nothing
+      of more and more passionate talk all over the place, some of it awfully
+      wild, but all of it wind in our sails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it was that wind then that blew me round there to see the thing
+      in its new light,&rdquo; Lady Grace said. &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t stay&mdash;for tears!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Hugh insisted on his side for comfort, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll crow loudest yet! And
+      don&rsquo;t meanwhile, just <i>don&rsquo;t</i>, those splendid strange eyes of the
+      fellow seem consciously to plead? The women, bless them, adore him, cling
+      to him, and there&rsquo;s talk of a &lsquo;Ladies&rsquo; League of Protest&rsquo;&mdash;all of
+      which keeps up the pitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Amy and I are a ladies&rsquo; league,&rdquo; the girl joylessly joked&mdash;&ldquo;as
+      we now take in the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; regardless of expense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh then you practically <i>have</i> it all&mdash;since,&rdquo; Hugh, added
+      after a brief hesitation, &ldquo;I suppose Lord Theign himself doesn&rsquo;t languish
+      uninformed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At far-off Salsomaggiore&mdash;by the papers? No doubt indeed he isn&rsquo;t
+      spared even the worst,&rdquo; said Lady Grace&mdash;&ldquo;and no doubt too it&rsquo;s a
+      drag on his cure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion seemed struck with her lack of assurance. &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t&mdash;if
+      I may ask&mdash;hear from him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Never a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t write?&rdquo; Hugh allowed himself to insist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t write. And I don&rsquo;t write either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Lady Sandgate?&rdquo; Hugh once more ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t <i>she</i> write?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t <i>she</i> hear?&rdquo; said the young man, treating the other form of
+      the question as a shade evasive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve asked her not to tell me,&rdquo; his friend replied&mdash;&ldquo;that is if he
+      simply holds out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that as she doesn&rsquo;t tell you&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was clear for the inference&mdash;&ldquo;he
+      of course does hold out.&rdquo; To which he added almost accusingly while his
+      eyes searched her: &ldquo;But your case is really bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She confessed to it after a moment, but as if vaguely enjoying it. &ldquo;My
+      case is really bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a vividness of impatience and contrition. 197
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s I who&mdash;all too blunderingly!&mdash;have made it so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made it so myself,&rdquo; she said with a high head-shake, &ldquo;and you, on
+      the contrary&mdash;!&rdquo; But here she checked her emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I&rsquo;ve so <i>wanted</i>, through our horrid silence, to help you!&rdquo; And
+      he pressed to get more at the truth. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve so quite fatally displeased
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the last point&mdash;as I tell you. But it&rsquo;s not to that I refer,&rdquo; she
+      explained; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s to the ground of complaint I&rsquo;ve given <i>you</i>.&rdquo; And
+      then as this but left him blank, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s time&mdash;it was at once time&mdash;that
+      you should know,&rdquo; she pursued; &ldquo;and yet if it&rsquo;s hard for me to speak, as
+      you see, it was impossible for me to write. But there it is.&rdquo; She made her
+      sad and beautiful effort. &ldquo;The last thing before he left us I let the
+      picture go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;?&rdquo; But he could only wonder&mdash;till, however, it
+      glimmered upon him. &ldquo;You gave up your protest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave up my protest. I told him that&mdash;so far as I&rsquo;m concerned!&mdash;he
+      might do as he liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her poor friend turned pale at the sharp little shock of it; but if his
+      face thus showed the pang of too great a surprise he yet wreathed the
+      convulsion in a gay grimace. &ldquo;You leave me to struggle alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I leave you to struggle alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it in bewilderingly, but tried again, even to the heroic, for
+      optimism. &ldquo;Ah well, you decided, I suppose, on some new personal ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; a reason came up, a reason I hadn&rsquo;t to that extent looked for and
+      which of a sudden&mdash;quickly, before he went&mdash;I <i>had</i> somehow
+      to deal with. So to give him my word in the dismal sense I mention was my
+      only way to meet the strain.&rdquo; She paused; Hugh waited for something
+      further, and &ldquo;I gave him my word I wouldn&rsquo;t help you,&rdquo; she wound up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned it over. &ldquo;To <i>act</i> in the matter&mdash;I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To act in the matter&rdquo;&mdash;she went through with it&mdash;&ldquo;after the
+      high stand I had taken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he studied it. &ldquo;I see&mdash;I see. It&rsquo;s between you and your
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s between him and me&mdash;yes. An engagement not again to trouble
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh, from his face, might have feared a still greater complication; so he
+      made, as he would probably have said, a jolly lot of this. &ldquo;Ah, that was
+      nice of you. And natural. <i>That&rsquo;s</i> all right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;she spoke from a deeper depth&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s altogether wrong. For
+      whatever happens I must now accept it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, say you must&rdquo;&mdash;he really declined not to treat it almost as
+      rather a &ldquo;lark&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;if we can at least go on talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we <i>can</i> at least go on talking!&rdquo; she perversely sighed. &ldquo;I can
+      say anything I like so long as I don&rsquo;t say it to <i>him</i>&rdquo; she almost
+      wailed. But she added with more firmness: &ldquo;I can still hope&mdash;and I
+      can still pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He set free again with a joyous gesture all his confidence. &ldquo;Well, what
+      more <i>could</i> you do, anyhow? So isn&rsquo;t that enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her a moment to say, and even then she didn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;Is it enough for
+      <i>you</i>, Mr. Crimble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What <i>is</i> enough for me&rdquo;&mdash;he could for his part readily name it&mdash;&ldquo;is
+      the harm done you at our last meeting by my irruption; so that if you got
+      his consent to see me&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get his consent!&rdquo;&mdash;she had turned away from the searching
+      eyes, but she faced them again to rectify: &ldquo;I see you against his express
+      command.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then thank God I came!&rdquo;&mdash;it was like a bland breath on a <i>feu
+      de joie</i>: he flamed so much higher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God you&rsquo;ve come, yes&mdash;for my deplorable exposure.&rdquo; And to
+      justify her name for it before he could protest, &ldquo;I <i>offered</i> him
+      here not to see you,&rdquo; she rigorously explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Offered him?&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh did drop for it. &ldquo;Not to see me&mdash;ever
+      again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She didn&rsquo;t falter. &ldquo;Never again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah then he understood. &ldquo;But he wouldn&rsquo;t let that serve&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for the price I put on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His yielding on the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His yielding on the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh lingered before it all. &ldquo;Your proposal wasn&rsquo;t &lsquo;good enough&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t good enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he repeated&mdash;&ldquo;I see.&rdquo; But he was in that light again
+      mystified. &ldquo;Then why are you therefore not free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;just after&mdash;you came back, and I <i>did</i> see you
+      again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, it was all present. &ldquo;You found you were too sorry for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found I was too sorry for you&mdash;as he himself found I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had got hold of it now. &ldquo;And <i>that</i>, you mean, he couldn&rsquo;t
+      stomach?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So little that when you had gone (and <i>how</i> you had to go you
+      remember) he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a
+      way so different from his own&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do all we want of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do all I did at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it was <i>then</i>,&rdquo; he took in, &ldquo;that you wouldn&rsquo;t deal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came
+      straighter and straighter now&mdash;&ldquo;those moments had brought you home to
+      me as they had also brought <i>him</i>; making such a difference, I felt,
+      for what he veered round to agree to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh wanted it so adorably definite&mdash;&ldquo;that you
+      didn&rsquo;t see your way to accepting&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not to accepting the condition he named.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which was that he&rsquo;d keep the picture for you if you&rsquo;d treat me as too
+      &lsquo;low&rsquo;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;d treat you,&rdquo; said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young face,
+      &ldquo;as impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept her eyes&mdash;he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. &ldquo;And not
+      even for the sake of the picture&mdash;?&rdquo; After he had given her time,
+      however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish
+      him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told him
+      didn&rsquo;t make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He <i>had</i> it, and
+      let her see by his high flush how he made it his own&mdash;while, the next
+      thing, as it was but part of her avowal, the rest of that illumination
+      called for a different intelligence. &ldquo;Your father&rsquo;s reprobation of me
+      personally is on the ground that you&rsquo;re all such great people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spared him the invidious answer to this as, a moment before, his
+      eagerness had spared her reserve; she flung over the &ldquo;ground&rdquo; that his
+      question laid bare the light veil of an evasion, &ldquo;&lsquo;Great people,&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve
+      learned to see, mustn&rsquo;t&mdash;to remain great&mdash;do what my father&rsquo;s
+      doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s indeed on the theory of their not so behaving,&rdquo; Hugh returned, &ldquo;that
+      we see them&mdash;all the inferior rest of us&mdash;in the grand glamour
+      of their greatness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had spoken to meet her admirable frankness half-way, that beauty in
+      her almost brushed him aside to make at a single step the rest of the
+      journey. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t see them in it for long&mdash;if they don&rsquo;t now, under
+      such tests and with such opportunities, begin to take care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had given him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the
+      closer criticism. &ldquo;Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth,
+      but &lsquo;takes care,&rsquo; with the least trouble to himself and the finest short
+      cut&mdash;does it, if you&rsquo;ll let me say so, rather on the cheap&mdash;by
+      finding &lsquo;the likes&rsquo; of me, as his daughter&rsquo;s trusted friend, out of the
+      question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you won&rsquo;t mind that, will you?&rdquo; Lady Grace asked, &ldquo;if he finds his
+      daughter herself, in any such relation to you, quite as much so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Different enough, from position to position and person to person,&rdquo; he
+      brightly brooded, &ldquo;is the view that gets itself <i>most</i> comfortably
+      taken of the implications of Honour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the girl returned; &ldquo;my father, in the act of despoiling us all, all
+      who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant consciousness,
+      keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine, so delicate sense,
+      by suddenly discovering that he&rsquo;s scandalised at my caring for your
+      friendship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession
+      promised and only waiting&mdash;or as if from that moment forth he had her
+      assurance of everything that most concerned him and that might most
+      inspire. &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t the moral of it all simply that what his perversity
+      of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us is to bring
+      us&mdash;and to keep us&mdash;blessedly together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed for a moment to question his &ldquo;simply.&rdquo; &ldquo;Do you regard us as so
+      much &lsquo;together&rsquo; when you remember where, in spite of everything, I&rsquo;ve put
+      myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By telling him to do what he likes?&rdquo; he recalled without embarrassment.
+      &ldquo;Oh, that wasn&rsquo;t in spite of &lsquo;everything&rsquo;&mdash;it was only in spite of
+      the Manto-vano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Only&rsquo;?&rdquo; she flushed&mdash;&ldquo;when I&rsquo;ve given the picture up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Hugh cried, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a hang for the picture!&rdquo; And then as she
+      let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands: &ldquo;We
+      both only care, don&rsquo;t we, that we&rsquo;re given to each other thus? We both
+      only care, don&rsquo;t we, that nothing can keep us apart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;ve forgiven me&mdash;!&rdquo; she sighed into his fond face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, since you gave the thing up <i>for</i> me,&rdquo; he pleadingly laughed,
+      &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t as if you had given <i>me</i> up&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For anything, anything? Ah never, never!&rdquo; she breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why aren&rsquo;t we all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you will&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh for ever and ever and ever!&rdquo;&mdash;and with this ardent cry of his
+      devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his
+      breast and to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning &ldquo;Amy
+      Sandgate!&rdquo;&mdash;as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room.
+      Lady Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them&mdash;their
+      disjunction had scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer
+      threshold. They had at once put the widest space possible between them&mdash;a
+      little of the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch
+      at composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one
+      side and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a
+      few moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of;
+      from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt and
+      responsible address to Hugh. &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t you go without more delay to
+      Clifford Street?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came back to it all alert &ldquo;At once!&rdquo; He had recovered his hat and
+      reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder lady.
+      &ldquo;Please pardon me&rdquo;&mdash;and he disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the
+      girl. &ldquo;Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father&rsquo;s suddenly
+      at hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has come back?&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Grace was sharply struck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to Kitty&mdash;according
+      to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back late from my luncheon. He
+      has returned with a rush&mdash;as,&rdquo; said his correspondent in the elation
+      of triumph, &ldquo;I was <i>sure</i> he would!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her young friend was more at sea. &ldquo;Brought back, you mean, by the outcry&mdash;even
+      though he so hates it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was more and more all lucidity&mdash;save in so far as she was now
+      almost all authority. &ldquo;Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come
+      back to face the music!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which the
+      music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to a
+      positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      dear old father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject? &ldquo;At
+      the point the row has reached he couldn&rsquo;t stand it another day; so he has
+      thrown up his cure and&mdash;lest we should oppose him!&mdash;not even
+      announced his start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; her companion returned, &ldquo;now that I&rsquo;ve <i>done</i> it all I shall
+      never oppose him again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she
+      might have received on entering. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll only oppose <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he does,&rdquo; said Lady Grace, &ldquo;we&rsquo;re at present two to bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven save us then&rdquo;&mdash;the elder woman was quick, was even cordial,
+      for the sense of this&mdash;&ldquo;your good friend <i>is</i> clever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace honoured the remark. &ldquo;Mr. Crim-ble&rsquo;s remarkably clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve arranged&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t arranged&mdash;but we&rsquo;ve understood. So that, dear Amy, if <i>you</i>
+      understand&mdash;!&rdquo; Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the
+      hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His lordship has arrived?&rdquo; his mistress immediately put to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my lady, but Lord John has&mdash;to know if he&rsquo;s expected <i>here</i>,
+      and in that case, by your ladyship&rsquo;s leave, to come up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her ladyship turned to the girl. &ldquo;May Lord John&mdash;as we do await your
+      father&mdash;come up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As suits <i>you</i>, please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may come up,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. &ldquo;His lordship&rsquo;s expected.&rdquo;
+       She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went on to her
+      companion: &ldquo;You asked me just now if I understood. Well&mdash;I do
+      understand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, with Gotch&rsquo;s withdrawal, which left the door open, had reached
+      the passage to the other room. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll excuse me!&rdquo;&mdash;she made her
+      escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter and quite
+      waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of his eagerness and
+      tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. &ldquo;What on earth then do
+      you suppose he has come back to <i>do</i>&mdash;?&rdquo; To which he added while
+      his hostess&rsquo;s gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture: &ldquo;Because when a
+      fellow really finds himself the centre of a cyclone&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it just at the centre,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;that you keep remarkably
+      still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I count on dear
+      Theign&rsquo;s doing nothing in the least foolish&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but he can&rsquo;t have chucked everything for nothing,&rdquo; Lord John sharply
+      returned; &ldquo;and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can&rsquo;t not meet
+      somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a great nobleman and
+      good citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the
+      scapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!&rdquo; Lady
+      Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Lord John concluded for her, &ldquo;the mercenary millions on whose
+      traffic in their trumpery values&mdash;when they&rsquo;re so lucky as to have
+      any!&mdash;<i>this</i> isn&rsquo;t a patch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there are cases <i>and</i> cases: situations and responsibilities so
+      intensely differ!&rdquo;&mdash;that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the
+      moral to be gathered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course everything differs, all round, from everything,&rdquo; Lord John went
+      on; &ldquo;and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the victim of
+      circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest motives, to be
+      literally torn to pieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshly
+      consulted her bracelet watch, &ldquo;I hope he isn&rsquo;t already torn&mdash;if you
+      tell me you&rsquo;ve been to Kitty&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again,&rdquo; the
+      young man explained, &ldquo;as Lady Imber hadn&rsquo;t been at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah cool Kitty!&rdquo; his hostess sighed again&mdash;but diverted, as she
+      spoke, by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding
+      Lord Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb of
+      travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearning tenderness
+      and compassionate curiosity. &ldquo;At last, dearest friend&mdash;what a joy!
+      But with Kitty not at home to receive you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That young woman&rsquo;s parent made light of it for the indulged creature&rsquo;s
+      sake. &ldquo;Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty.&rdquo; To
+      which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord John:
+      &ldquo;But Bender, who came there before my arrival&mdash;he hasn&rsquo;t tried for me
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive. &ldquo;I
+      met him at the club at luncheon; he had had your letter&mdash;but for
+      which chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You&rsquo;ll see him all
+      right at this house; but I&rsquo;m glad, if I may say so, Theign,&rdquo; the speaker
+      pursued with some emphasis&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad, you know, to get hold of you
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but his
+      other companion&rsquo;s apprehension had already overflowed. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t come
+      back, have you&mdash;to whatever it may be!&mdash;for <i>trouble</i> of
+      any sort with Breckenridge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship transferred his penetration to this fair friend, &ldquo;Have you
+      become so intensely absorbed&mdash;these remarkable days!&mdash;in
+      &lsquo;Breckenridge&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the shadow, you would have seen, of his claimed right, or at
+      least privilege, of search&mdash;yet easily, after an instant, emerged
+      clear. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought and dreamt but of <i>you</i>&mdash;suspicious man!&mdash;in
+      proportion as the clamour has spread; and Mr. Bender meanwhile, if you
+      want to know, hasn&rsquo;t been near me once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John came in a manner, and however unconsciously, to her aid. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d
+      have seen, if he had been, what&rsquo;s the matter with him, I think&mdash;and
+      what perhaps Theign has seen from his own letter: since,&rdquo; he went on to
+      his fellow-visitor, &ldquo;I understood him a week ago to have been much taken
+      up with writing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s letter,&rdquo; he then vouchsafed
+      to Lord John&mdash;&ldquo;three extraordinarily vulgar pages about the egregious
+      Pap-pendick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, as Breckenridge
+      says, marked the picture down?&rdquo;&mdash;the young man was clearly
+      all-knowing. &ldquo;That <i>has</i> of course weighed on Bender&mdash;being
+      confirmed apparently, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some of his
+      friend&rsquo;s terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the babbler
+      or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. &ldquo;He too has known
+      me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of &lsquo;the drift of public
+      opinion&rsquo;!&rdquo; After which he quite charged at his vain informant. &ldquo;Am I to
+      tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of public opinion?&mdash;which
+      is but another name for the chatter of all the fools one doesn&rsquo;t know, in
+      addition to all those (and plenty of &lsquo;em!) one damnably does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse.
+      &ldquo;Ah, you did <i>that</i>, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on
+      <i>you</i>,&rdquo; Lord John importantly explained&mdash;&ldquo;but in the light of
+      its effect on Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he <i>is</i>
+      to have it, to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last
+      for anything but the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication,
+      betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptly
+      restored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action. &ldquo;Well,
+      isn&rsquo;t a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. &ldquo;A fine old
+      Moretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough&mdash;for
+      its comparative, strictly comparative, insignificance; and he only thought
+      of the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That that mendacious young cad who has bamboozled Grace,&rdquo; Lord Theign
+      broke in, &ldquo;tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claiming for
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. &ldquo;Ah, the knowing people haven&rsquo;t
+      had their last word&mdash;the possible Mantovano isn&rsquo;t exploded <i>yet!</i>&rdquo;
+       Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had enough of
+      the knowing people&mdash;the knowing people are serpents! My picture&rsquo;s to
+      take or to leave&mdash;and it&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve come back, if you please, John,
+      to say to your man to his face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as the
+      successive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smoke
+      cleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing and smiling. &ldquo;Yes,
+      why in mercy&rsquo;s name can&rsquo;t he choose <i>which?</i>&mdash;and why does he
+      write him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome argumentative letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had been
+      working in him rather vehemently, though under due caution too, as a
+      consequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively watched
+      his elder. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I quite see <i>how</i>, my dear Theign, the poor
+      chap&rsquo;s letter was so offensive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that case his dear Theign could tell him. &ldquo;Because it was a tissue of
+      expressions that may pass current&mdash;over counters and in awful
+      newspapers&mdash;in <i>his</i> extraordinary world or country, but that I
+      decline to take time to puzzle out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he didn&rsquo;t make himself understood,&rdquo; Lord John took leave to laugh, &ldquo;it
+      must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his turns,
+      haven&rsquo;t a notion,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety, &ldquo;of what
+      he&rsquo;s talking about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I never miss his weird sense,&rdquo; her younger guest again loyally
+      contended&mdash;&ldquo;and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I happen to like nothing that I don&rsquo;t enjoy,&rdquo; Lord Theign rejoined with
+      some asperity&mdash;&ldquo;and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my
+      part an interest in his expenditure of purchase-money that I neither feel
+      nor pretend to. He doesn&rsquo;t want&mdash;by what I spell out&mdash;the
+      picture he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want&mdash;if one reads
+      it so&mdash;the picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to
+      make, with great emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two
+      &lsquo;articles&rsquo; (the greatest of Morettos an &lsquo;article&rsquo;!) haven&rsquo;t been &lsquo;by now&rsquo; 
+      proved different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove
+      them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John indulged in a pause&mdash;but also in a suggestion. &ldquo;He must
+      allude to your hoping&mdash;when you allowed us to place the picture with
+      Mackintosh&mdash;that it would show to all London in the most precious
+      light conceivable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if it hasn&rsquo;t so shown&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign stared as if mystified&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      in the world&rsquo;s the meaning of this preposterous racket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The racket is largely,&rdquo; his young friend explained, &ldquo;the vociferation of
+      the people who contradict each other about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question.
+      &ldquo;Some&mdash;yes&mdash;shouting on the housetops that&rsquo;s a Mantovano of the
+      Mantovanos, and others shrieking back at them that they&rsquo;re donkeys if not
+      criminals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may take it for whatever he likes,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, heedless of
+      these contributions, &ldquo;he may father it on Michael Angelo himself if he&rsquo;ll
+      but clear out with it and let me alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What he&rsquo;d <i>like</i> to take it for,&rdquo; Lord John at this point saw his
+      way to remark, &ldquo;is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Hundred Thousand?&rdquo; cried his astonished friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand&rdquo;&mdash;the young man enjoyed
+      clearly handling even by the lips so round a sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility any appearance of having
+      gaped. &ldquo;Why, haven&rsquo;t you yet realised, Theign, that those are the American
+      figures?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship looked at her fixedly and then did the same by Lord John,
+      after which he waited a little. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to do with the American
+      figures&mdash;which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite
+      intolerably vulgar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate
+      hastened to proclaim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t he let us know at Dedborough,&rdquo; Lord John asked of the master of
+      that seat, &ldquo;that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard him remark myself,&rdquo; said their companion, rising to the
+      monstrous memory, &ldquo;that he wouldn&rsquo;t take a cheap picture&mdash;even though
+      a &lsquo;handsome&rsquo; one&mdash;as a present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?&rdquo; the
+      proprietor of the work demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience. &ldquo;All he wants to
+      do, don&rsquo;t you see? is to prevent your <i>making</i> it one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign glared at this imputation to him of a low ductility. &ldquo;I
+      offered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy of it&mdash;and of <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear reckless friend,&rdquo; his young adviser protested, &ldquo;you named no
+      figure <i>at all</i> when it came to the point&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>didn&rsquo;t</i> come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I
+      put a Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign
+      accepted the reminding gesture&mdash;&ldquo;on which a rich American had an eye
+      and in which he had, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and
+      so we left it&mdash;parting each of us ready but neither of us bound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Bender&rsquo;s bound, as he&rsquo;d say,&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate interposed&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;bound&rsquo; 
+      to make you swallow the enormous luscious plum that your appetite so
+      morbidly rejects!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My appetite, as morbid as you like&rdquo;&mdash;her old friend had shrewdly
+      turned on her&mdash;&ldquo;is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in
+      enormities I warn him to carry them elsewhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated at the absurdity
+      of him. &ldquo;But how can&rsquo;t you see that it&rsquo;s only a plum, as she says, for a
+      plum and an eye for an eye&mdash;since the picture itself, with this huge
+      ventilation, is now quite a different affair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himself confesses
+      is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants, there&rsquo;s no
+      really established ground for treating it as anything but the same?&rdquo; On
+      which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shook himself free
+      again, in his high petulance, and moved restlessly to where the passage to
+      the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; all moreover to the
+      effect of suggesting to us that something still other than what he had
+      said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneath that quantity. The
+      spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time, in uncertainty and
+      with a mute but associated comment on the perversity and oddity he had so
+      suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug of almost bored despair and
+      Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact for their action by a finger
+      flourished to her lips, and in fact at once proceeding to apply these
+      arts. The subject of her attention had still remained as in worried
+      thought; he had even mechanically taken up a book from a table&mdash;which
+      he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer,&rdquo; she began&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      unless you stick to <i>that</i> you might as well have done nothing. What
+      you call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly
+      what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to be <i>allowed</i>
+      to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers haven&rsquo;t settled
+      anything for those who know&mdash;though which of the elect themselves
+      after all <i>does</i> seem to know?&mdash;it&rsquo;s a great service rendered
+      him to have started such a hare to run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. &ldquo;Certainly
+      his connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end for his
+      glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It didn&rsquo;t, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least
+      made his indifference flash with derision. &ldquo;His &lsquo;glory&rsquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s
+      glory? Why, they quite universally loathe him&mdash;judging by the stuff
+      they print!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, here&mdash;as a corrupter of our morals and a promoter of our decay,
+      even though so many are flat on their faces to him&mdash;yes! But it&rsquo;s
+      another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand
+      steam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest: <i>there</i>
+      he&rsquo;ll be, if you&rsquo;ll only let him, the biggest thing going; since sound, in
+      that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts. If he said
+      of the thing, as you recognise,&rdquo; Lord John went on, &ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s going to be a
+      Mantovano,&rsquo; why you can bet your life that it <i>is</i>&mdash;that it has
+      <i>got</i> to be some kind of a one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would have
+      been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair&mdash;worked up to
+      something quite openly wilful and passionate. &ldquo;No kind of a furious
+      flaunting one, under <i>my</i> patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The
+      Dedborough picture in the market&mdash;owing to horrid little
+      circumstances that regard myself alone&mdash;is the Dedborough picture at
+      a decent, sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else
+      whatever; which I beg you will take as my last word on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, trying whether he <i>could</i> take it, momentarily mingled his
+      hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless
+      look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only
+      reassert himself. &ldquo;May I nevertheless reply that I think you&rsquo;ll not be
+      able to prevent <i>anything?</i>&mdash;since the discussed object will
+      completely escape your control in New York!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And almost any discussed object&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sand-gate rose to the
+      occasion also&mdash;&ldquo;is in New York, by what one hears, easily <i>worth</i>
+      a Hundred Thousand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. &ldquo;I sell the man a
+      Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent
+      swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;Lord John was but briefly baffled&mdash;&ldquo;when the picture&rsquo;s
+      his you can&rsquo;t help its doing what it can and what it will for him
+      anywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it isn&rsquo;t his yet,&rdquo; the elder man retorted&mdash;&ldquo;and I promise you
+      never will be if he has <i>sent</i> you to me with his big drum!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as if the
+      case were now really beyond them. &ldquo;Yes, how indeed can it ever <i>become</i>
+      his if Theign simply won&rsquo;t let him pay for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her question was unanswerable. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first time in all my life I&rsquo;ve
+      known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening <i>not</i>
+      to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Theign is unable to take it in,&rdquo; her ladyship explained, &ldquo;that&mdash;as
+      I&rsquo;ve heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type&mdash;Bender
+      simply can&rsquo;t <i>afford</i> not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest
+      buyer who ever lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, cited and celebrated at my <i>expense</i>&mdash;say it at once and
+      have it over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dear man&rsquo;s inimitable&mdash;at his &lsquo;expense&rsquo;!&rdquo; It was more than Lord
+      John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence
+      and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean,&rdquo; Lord Theign asseverated&mdash;&ldquo;at
+      the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour by my own
+      standards. There you perfectly <i>are</i> about the man, and it&rsquo;s
+      precisely what I say&mdash;that he&rsquo;s to hustle and harry me <i>because</i>
+      he&rsquo;s a money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please
+      understand, when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource
+      at Dedborough. I didn&rsquo;t put my property on view that <i>he</i> might blow
+      about it&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, if you like it,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate returned; &ldquo;but you certainly didn&rsquo;t so
+      arrange&rdquo;&mdash;she seemed to think her point somehow would help&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      you might blow about it yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody wants to &lsquo;blow,&rsquo;&rdquo; Lord John more stoutly interposed, &ldquo;either hot
+      or cold, I take it; but I really don&rsquo;t see the harm of Bender&rsquo;s liking to
+      be known for the scale of his transactions&mdash;actual or merely imputed
+      even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. &ldquo;The only question
+      perhaps is why he doesn&rsquo;t try for some precious work that somebody&mdash;less
+      delicious than dear Theign&mdash;<i>can</i> be persuaded on bended knees
+      to accept a hundred thousand for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Try&rsquo; for one?&rdquo;&mdash;her younger visitor took it up while her elder more
+      attentively watched him. &ldquo;That was exactly what he did try for when he
+      pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh well, he mustn&rsquo;t come back to <i>that</i>&mdash;must he, Theign?&rdquo; her
+      ladyship cooed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious
+      apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed himself.
+      &ldquo;Besides which there <i>are</i> no things of that magnitude knocking
+      about, don&rsquo;t you know?&mdash;they&rsquo;ve <i>got</i> to be worked up first if
+      they&rsquo;re to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind,&rdquo; he
+      continued to his noble monitor, &ldquo;an agreement on some such basis as <i>this</i>?&mdash;that
+      you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you&rsquo;ll squeamishly
+      consent to take, if it&rsquo;s at the same time the smallest he&rsquo;ll squeamishly
+      consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him free&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion
+      only waited. &ldquo;Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum
+      taken as practically one and the same?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you know,&rdquo; Lord John discriminated, &ldquo;he doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;talk&rsquo; so much
+      himself&mdash;there&rsquo;s really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender.
+      It&rsquo;s the rate at which&mdash;by the very way he&rsquo;s &lsquo;fixed&rsquo;: an awful way
+      indeed, I grant you!&mdash;a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at
+      his heels, are always talking for him and of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that had
+      been slowly gathering force. &ldquo;<i>You</i> talk for him, my dear chap,
+      pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assured of
+      a commission on the job&mdash;on a fine ascending scale! Has he put you up
+      to that proposition, eh? <i>Do</i> you get a handsome percentage and <i>are</i>
+      you to make a good thing of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry&mdash;whether from a
+      good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise
+      showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch. &ldquo;As he&rsquo;s
+      to come to you himself&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t know why the mischief he doesn&rsquo;t
+      come!&mdash;he will answer you that graceful question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he answer it,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;with the veracity that the
+      suggestion you&rsquo;ve just made on his behalf represents him as so beautifully
+      adhering to?&rdquo; On which he again quite fiercely turned his back and
+      recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a blanker
+      dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why
+      you should speak as if I were urging some abomination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you why!&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign was upon him again for the
+      purpose. &ldquo;Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright and for
+      good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the
+      interest of such equivocations!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently in
+      turn to her amusement. &ldquo;&lsquo;Give it away,&rsquo; my dear friend, to a man who only
+      longs to smother you in gold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. &ldquo;Give it away&mdash;just
+      for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter&mdash;to some cause as
+      unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender&rsquo;s power of sound and his splendid
+      reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the Thingumbob, to the
+      Nation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and
+      stupefied. &ldquo;Ah, my dear creature, you&rsquo;ve flights of extravagance&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing&rsquo;s very certain,&rdquo; Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my
+      nerves, more and more every minute that I&rsquo;m conscious of it; so that, hang
+      it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn&rsquo;t I, for my relief, do again, damme,
+      <i>what I like</i>?&mdash;that is bang the door in their faces, have the
+      show immediately stopped?&rdquo; He turned with the attraction of this idea from
+      one of his listeners to the other. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>my</i> show&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t
+      Bender&rsquo;s, surely!&mdash;and I can do just as I choose with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but isn&rsquo;t that the very point?&rdquo;&mdash;and Lady Sandgate put it to
+      Lord John. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it Bender&rsquo;s show much more than his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of
+      disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly&mdash;while Lord Theign,
+      on the other hand, followed up his happy thought. &ldquo;Then if it&rsquo;s Bender&rsquo;s
+      show, or if he claims it is, there&rsquo;s all the more reason!&rdquo; And it took his
+      lordship&rsquo;s inspiration no longer to flower. &ldquo;See here, John&mdash;do this:
+      go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to shut
+      straight down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Shut straight down&rsquo;?&rdquo; the young man abhorrently echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop it <i>to-night</i>&mdash;wind it up and end it: see?&rdquo; The more the
+      entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly took on
+      for him. &ldquo;Have the picture removed from view and the incident closed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seriously ask <i>that</i> of me!&rdquo; poor Lord John quavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why in the world shouldn&rsquo;t I? It&rsquo;s a jolly lot less than you asked of me
+      a month ago at Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then am I to say to them?&rdquo; Lord John spoke but after a long moment,
+      during which he had only looked hard and&mdash;an observer might even then
+      have felt&mdash;ominously at his taskmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. &ldquo;Say
+      anything that comes into your clever head. I don&rsquo;t really see that there&rsquo;s
+      anything else <i>for</i> you!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger, who
+      gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; then he eyed
+      his friend significantly&mdash;almost portentously. &ldquo;Those are absolutely
+      your sentiments?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are absolutely my sentiments&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign brought this
+      out as with the force of a physical push.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then!&rdquo; But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly
+      sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the
+      extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. &ldquo;Not one more day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign only waved him away. &ldquo;Not one more hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme
+      protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the two
+      pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance, he
+      clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed on his
+      mission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t bear to do it, poor man!&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate ruefully remarked to
+      her remaining guest after Lord John had, under extreme pressure, dashed
+      out to Bond Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say not!&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign, flushed with the felicity of
+      self-expression, made little of that. &ldquo;But he goes too far, you see, and
+      it clears the air&mdash;pouah! Now therefore&rdquo;&mdash;and he glanced at the
+      clock&mdash;&ldquo;I must go to Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitty&mdash;with what Kitty wants,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate opined&mdash;&ldquo;won&rsquo;t
+      thank you for <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never thanks me for anything&rdquo;&mdash;and the fact of his resignation
+      clearly added here to his bitterness. &ldquo;So it&rsquo;s no great loss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you at any rate,&rdquo; his hostess asked, &ldquo;wait for Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship cast it to the winds. &ldquo;What have I to do with him now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why surely if he&rsquo;ll accept your own price&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign thought&mdash;he wondered; and then as if fairly amused at
+      himself: &ldquo;Hanged if I know what <i>is</i> my own price!&rdquo; After which he
+      went for his hat. &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one thing,&rdquo; he remembered as he came back
+      with it: &ldquo;where&rsquo;s my too, <i>too</i> unnatural daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean Grace and really want her I&rsquo;ll send and find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now&rdquo;&mdash;he bethought himself. &ldquo;But does she <i>see</i> that
+      chatterbox?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble? Yes, she sees him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eyes on her. &ldquo;Then how far has it gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate overcame an embarrassment. &ldquo;Well, not even yet, I think, so
+      far as they&rsquo;d like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;d &lsquo;like&rsquo;&mdash;heaven save the mark!&mdash;to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect them of it. What line, if it should come to that,&rdquo; she asked,
+      &ldquo;would you then take?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was perfectly prompt. &ldquo;The line that for Grace it&rsquo;s simply ignoble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The force of her deprecation of such language was qualified by tact. &ldquo;Ah,
+      darling, as dreadful as <i>that?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could but view the possibility with dark resentment. &ldquo;It lets us so
+      down&mdash;from what we&rsquo;ve always been and done; so down, down, down that
+      I&rsquo;m amazed you don&rsquo;t feel it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I feel there&rsquo;s still plenty to keep you up!&rdquo; she soothingly laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to consider this vague amount&mdash;which he apparently judged,
+      however, not so vast as to provide for the whole yearning of his nature.
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; he thus more blandly professed, &ldquo;I shall need all the
+      extra <i>agrément</i> that your affection can supply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If nothing could have been, on this, richer response, nothing could at the
+      same time have bee more pleasing than her modesty. &ldquo;Ah, my affectionate
+      Theign, is, as I think you know, a fountain always in flood; but in any
+      more worldly element than that&mdash;as you&rsquo;ve ever seen for yourself&mdash;a
+      poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not &lsquo;great&rsquo; as they
+      used so finely to call it! You <i>are</i>&mdash;with the natural sense of
+      greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man doing and
+      taking things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for
+      the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. &ldquo;If you mean that I hold up my
+      head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much longer
+      possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the name of
+      goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them, and is it
+      really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her license and a
+      specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I&rsquo;m in danger of
+      helplessly to swallow the dose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you find Mr. Crimble,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate as if there might really be
+      something to say, &ldquo;so utterly out of the question?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree
+      offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one&rsquo;s poor dear
+      decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would
+      forbid <i>that</i> kind of relation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What kind of relation, if any, Hugh&rsquo;s deficiencies might still render
+      thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of
+      Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether assured
+      sound of &ldquo;Mr. Breckenridge Bender.&rdquo; The guest in possession gave a cry of
+      impatience, but Lady Sandgate said &ldquo;Coming up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If his lordship will see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s beyond his time,&rdquo; his lordship pronounced&mdash;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see him
+      now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but <i>mustn&rsquo;t</i> you&mdash;and mayn&rsquo;t <i>I</i> then?&rdquo; She waited,
+      however, for no response to signify to her servant &ldquo;Let him come,&rdquo; and her
+      companion could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he
+      wondered at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a
+      little that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. &ldquo;Does the kind of
+      relation you&rsquo;d be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down,
+      as you say, more than the relation you&rsquo;ve been having with Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. &ldquo;Do you mean don&rsquo;t
+      I hate &lsquo;em equally both?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cut his further reply short, however, by a &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; of warning&mdash;Mr.
+      Bender was there and his introducer had left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon little
+      to ceremony. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve but a moment, to my regret, to give you, Mr. Bender,
+      and if you&rsquo;ve been unavoidably detained, as you great bustling people are
+      so apt to be, it will perhaps still be soon enough for your comfort to
+      hear from me that I&rsquo;ve just given order to close our exhibition. From the
+      present hour on, sir&rdquo;&mdash;he put it with the firmness required to settle
+      the futility of an appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s large surprise lost itself, however, promptly enough, in Mr.
+      Bender&rsquo;s larger ease. &ldquo;Why, do you really mean it, Lord Theign?&mdash;removing
+      already from view a work that gives innocent gratification to thousands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said his lordship curtly, &ldquo;if thousands have seen it I&rsquo;ve done
+      what I wanted, and if they&rsquo;ve been gratified I&rsquo;m content&mdash;and invite
+      <i>you</i> to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender showed more keenness for this richer implication. &ldquo;In other
+      words it&rsquo;s I who may remove the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll take it on my estimate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what, Lord Theign, all this time,&rdquo; Mr. Bender almost pathetically
+      pleaded, &ldquo;<i>is</i> your estimate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The parting guest had another pause, which prolonged itself, after he had
+      reached the door, in a deep solicitation of their hostess&rsquo;s conscious
+      eyes. This brief passage apparently inspired his answer. &ldquo;Lady Sandgate
+      will tell you.&rdquo; The door closed behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The charming woman smiled then at her other friend, whose comprehensive
+      presence appeared now to demand of her some account of these strange
+      proceedings. &ldquo;He means that your own valuation is much too shockingly
+      high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can I know <i>how</i> much unless I find out what he&rsquo;ll take?&rdquo;
+       The great collector&rsquo;s spirit had, in spite of its volume, clearly not
+      reached its limit of expansion. &ldquo;Is he crazily waiting for the thing to be
+      proved <i>not</i> what Mr. Crimble claims?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;s waiting for nothing&mdash;since he holds that claim demolished
+      by Pappendick&rsquo;s tremendous negative, which you wrote to tell him of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vast, undeveloped and suddenly grave, Mr. Bender&rsquo;s countenance showed like
+      a barren tract under a black cloud. &ldquo;I wrote to <i>report</i>, fair and
+      square, on Pap-pendick, but to tell him I&rsquo;d take the picture just the
+      same, negative and all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but take it in that way not for what it is but for what it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know nothing about what it &lsquo;isn&rsquo;t,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Mr. Bender, &ldquo;after all that
+      has happened&mdash;we&rsquo;ve only learned a little better every day what it
+      is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; his companion asked, &ldquo;the biggest bone of artistic contention&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo;&mdash;he took it from her&mdash;&ldquo;the biggest that has been thrown
+      into the arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance; it
+      was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.
+      &ldquo;Well, if it&rsquo;s the biggest bone I won&rsquo;t touch it; I&rsquo;ll leave it to be
+      mauled by my betters. But since his lordship has asked me to name a price,
+      dear Mr. Bender, I&rsquo;ll name one&mdash;and as you prefer big prices I&rsquo;ll try
+      to make it suit you. Only it won&rsquo;t be for the portrait of a person nobody
+      is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my
+      great-grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!&rdquo;&mdash;and her visitor turned from her with
+      the hunch of overcharged shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such a
+      conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been
+      delivered into my hands&mdash;too charmingly; and you won&rsquo;t really pretend
+      that you don&rsquo;t recognise that and in fact rather like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness unparalleled&mdash;though
+      indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the question of whether he
+      had been artfully practised upon; an indifference to bad debts or
+      peculation like that of some huge hotel or other business involving a
+      margin for waste. He could afford, he could work waste too, clearly&mdash;and
+      what was it, that term, you might have felt him ask, but a mean measure,
+      anyway? quite as the &ldquo;artful,&rdquo; opposed to his larger game, would be the
+      hiding and pouncing of children at play. &ldquo;Do I gather that those uncanny
+      words of his were just meant to put me off?&rdquo; he inquired. And then as she
+      but boldly and smilingly shrugged, repudiating responsibility, &ldquo;Look here,
+      Lady Sandgate, ain&rsquo;t you honestly going to help me?&rdquo; he pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. &ldquo;Mr. Bender, Mr.
+      Bender, I&rsquo;ll help you if you&rsquo;ll help <i>me!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll really get me something from him to go on with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get you something from him to go on with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all I ask&mdash;to get <i>that</i>. Then I can move the way I
+      want. But without it I&rsquo;m held up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall have it,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;if I in turn may look to <i>you</i> for
+      a trifle on account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he dryly gloomed at her, &ldquo;what do you call a trifle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean&rdquo;&mdash;she waited but an instant&mdash;&ldquo;what you would feel as
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do. You haven&rsquo;t the least idea, Lady Sandgate,&rdquo; he earnestly
+      said, &ldquo;<i>how</i> I feel at these foolish times. I&rsquo;ve never got used to
+      them yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t you understand,&rdquo; she pressed, &ldquo;that if I give you an advantage
+      I&rsquo;m completely at your mercy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what mercy,&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;do you deserve?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited a little, brightly composed&mdash;then she indicated her inner
+      shrine, the whereabouts of her precious picture. &ldquo;Go and look at her again
+      and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His protest was large, but so, after a moment, was his compliance&mdash;his
+      heavy advance upon the other room, from just within the doorway of which
+      the great Lawrence was serenely visible. Mr. Bender gave it his eyes once
+      more&mdash;though after the fashion verily of a man for whom it had now no
+      freshness of a glamour, no shade of a secret; then he came back to his
+      hostess. &ldquo;Do you call giving me an advantage squeezing me by your sweet
+      modesty for less than I may possibly bear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I say fairer,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;than that, with my backing about
+      the other picture, which I&rsquo;ve passed you my word for, thrown in, I&rsquo;ll
+      resign myself to whatever you may be disposed&mdash;characteristically!&mdash;to
+      give for this one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a question of resignation,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender, &ldquo;you mean of course
+      what I may be disposed&mdash;characteristically!&mdash;<i>not</i> to
+      give.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She played on him for an instant all her radiance. &ldquo;Yes then, you dear
+      sharp rich thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you take in, I assume,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m just going to lean on
+      you, for what I want, with the full weight of a determined man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;I promise you I&rsquo;ll thoroughly obey the direction of
+      your pressure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then!&rdquo; And he stopped before her, in his unrest, monumentally
+      pledged, yet still more massively immeasurable. &ldquo;How&rsquo;ll you have it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bristled as with all the possible beautiful choices; then she shed her
+      selection as a heaving fruit-tree might have dropped some round ripeness.
+      It was for her friend to pick up his plum and his privilege. &ldquo;Will you
+      write a cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you want it right away.&rdquo; To which, however, he added, clapping
+      vainly a breast-pocket: &ldquo;But my cheque-book&rsquo;s down in my car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the door?&rdquo; She scarce required his assent to touch a bell. &ldquo;I can
+      easily send for it.&rdquo; And she threw off while they waited: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so sweet
+      your &lsquo;flying round&rsquo; with your cheque-book!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put it with promptitude another way. &ldquo;It flies round pretty well with
+      <i>Mr</i>&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s cheque-book&mdash;in his car,&rdquo; she went on to Gotch, who had
+      answered her summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find
+      in the pocket a large red morocco case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; said Gotch&mdash;but with another word for his mistress.
+      &ldquo;Lord John would like to know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord John&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; she interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch turned to the open door. &ldquo;Here he is, my lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender&rsquo;s eye, to the
+      complication involved in his lordship&rsquo;s presence. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s he who went round
+      to Bond Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. &ldquo;To stop the show?&rdquo; And then as
+      the young man was already there: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve stopped the show?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s &lsquo;on&rsquo; more than ever!&rdquo; Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a
+      hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the
+      backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. &ldquo;But Theign should be
+      here!&rdquo;&mdash;he addressed her excitedly. &ldquo;I announce you a call from the
+      Prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince?&rdquo;&mdash;she gasped as for the burden of the honour. &ldquo;He
+      follows you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking,
+      recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of associational
+      advantage and auspicious possibility. &ldquo;Is the Prince <i>after</i> the
+      thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing but
+      his message. &ldquo;He was there with Mackintosh&mdash;to see and admire the
+      picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!&mdash;and
+      did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh in
+      his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our noble friend and
+      of which, embarrassed though I doubtless was,&rdquo; the young man pursued to
+      Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so delighted
+      with it that he declared they mustn&rsquo;t think then of taking the thing off,
+      but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it&rsquo;s worth, and
+      he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and explain him his
+      reasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their hostess cast about for a sign. &ldquo;Why Theign is at Kitty&rsquo;s, worse
+      luck! The Prince calls on him <i>here?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He calls, you see, on <i>you</i>, my lady&mdash;at five-forty-five; and
+      graciously desired me so to put it you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very kind, but&rdquo;&mdash;she took in her condition&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not even
+      <i>dressed!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time&rdquo;&mdash;the young man was a comfort&mdash;&ldquo;while I rush
+      to Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender&mdash;though it&rsquo;s so near&mdash;if
+      I just bag your car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s, that&rsquo;s it, take his car!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate almost swept him
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may use my car all right,&rdquo; Mr. Bender contributed&mdash;&ldquo;but what I
+      want to know is what the man&rsquo;s <i>after</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man? what man?&rdquo; his friend scarce paused to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince then&mdash;if you allow he <i>is</i> a man! Is he after my
+      picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll wait, my dear fellow,
+      you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh why should he &lsquo;wait&rsquo;?&rdquo; burst from their cautious companion&mdash;only
+      to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious
+      revolution. &ldquo;Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender&mdash;I won&rsquo;t give you up for
+      any Prince!&rdquo; With which she appealed again to Lord John. &ldquo;He wants to
+      &lsquo;congratulate&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On Theign&rsquo;s decision, as I&rsquo;ve told you&mdash;which I announced to
+      Mackintosh, by Theign&rsquo;s extraordinary order, under his Highness&rsquo;s nose,
+      and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick
+      perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the
+      Prince&rsquo;s interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their
+      actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. &ldquo;The
+      decision to remove the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John also observed a discretion. &ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t hear of such a thing&mdash;says
+      it must stay stock still. So there you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a clamorous,
+      series of questions. &ldquo;But <i>where</i> are we, and what has the Prince to
+      do with Lord Theign&rsquo;s decision when that&rsquo;s all <i>I&rsquo;m</i> here for? What
+      in thunder <i>is</i> Lord Theign&rsquo;s decision&mdash;what was his
+      &lsquo;extraordinary order&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this
+      solicitor as he had already been put off. &ldquo;Lady Sandgate, <i>you</i> tell
+      him! I rush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. &ldquo;What the h&mdash;&mdash;
+      then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what &lsquo;sentiments&rsquo; did
+      he report round there that Lord Theign had been expressing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to
+      recognise the subject of his curiosity&mdash;for fear of other
+      recognitions. &ldquo;They put everything on <i>me</i>, my dear man&mdash;but I
+      haven&rsquo;t the least idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her askance. &ldquo;Then why does the fellow say you have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. &ldquo;Because the
+      fellow&rsquo;s so agog that he doesn&rsquo;t know <i>what</i> he says!&rdquo; In addition to
+      which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on a salver
+      the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The large red morocco case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. &ldquo;Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on my
+      desk,&rdquo; she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again before
+      she resumed to her visitor: &ldquo;Mightn&rsquo;t we conclude before he comes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince?&rdquo; Mr. Bender&rsquo;s imagination had strayed from the ground to
+      which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps.
+      &ldquo;Will <i>he</i> want your great-grandmother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he may when he sees her!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate laughed. &ldquo;And Theign, when
+      he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every
+      information. Shall I fish it out for you?&rdquo; she encouragingly asked, beside
+      him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her persuasive
+      guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him, opening out the
+      gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but to help himself.
+      &ldquo;What enormous cheques! <i>You</i> can never draw one for two-pound-ten!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what you deserve I <i>should</i> do!&rdquo; He remained after
+      this solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with
+      ceremonies; in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held
+      out to him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they
+      might have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before
+      him on the table, coming away with a brave gay &ldquo;Well, I leave it to you!&rdquo;
+       She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance for many
+      minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the recurrent
+      Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble, please&mdash;for Lady Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble <i>again?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;she took it discomposedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Crimble? Why he&rsquo;s just the man I want to see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. &ldquo;Here he is, my
+      lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell her ladyship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has come down,&rdquo; said Gotch while Hugh arrived and his companion
+      withdrew, and while Lady Grace, reaching the scene from the other quarter,
+      emerged in bright equipment&mdash;in her hat, scarf and gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      These young persons were thus at once confronted across the room, and the
+      girl explained her preparation. &ldquo;I was listening hard&mdash;for your knock
+      and your voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then know that, thank God, it&rsquo;s all right!&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was breathless,
+      jubilant, radiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano?&rdquo; she delightedly cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano!&rdquo; he proudly gave back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano!&rdquo;&mdash;it carried even Lady Sandgate away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano&mdash;a sure thing?&rdquo; Mr. Bender jumped up from his business,
+      all gaping attention to Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just left our blest Bardi,&rdquo; said that young man&mdash;&ldquo;who hasn&rsquo;t
+      the shadow of a doubt and is delighted to publish it everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he publish it right here to <i>me?</i>&rdquo; Mr. Bender hungrily asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Hugh smiled, &ldquo;you can try him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But try him how, where?&rdquo; The great collector, straining to instant
+      action, cast about for his hat &ldquo;Where <i>is</i> he, hey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you wish I&rsquo;d tell you?&rdquo; Hugh, in his personal elation, almost
+      cynically answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you wait for the Prince?&rdquo; Lady Sandgate had meanwhile asked of her
+      friend; but had turned more inspectingly to Lady Grace before he could
+      reply. &ldquo;My dear child&mdash;though you&rsquo;re lovely!&mdash;are you sure
+      you&rsquo;re ready for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the Prince!&rdquo;&mdash;the girl was vague. &ldquo;Is he coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At five-forty-five.&rdquo; With which she consulted her bracelet watch, but
+      only at once to wail for alarm. &ldquo;Ah, it <i>is</i> that, and I&rsquo;m not
+      dressed!&rdquo; She hurried off through the other room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, quite accepting her retreat, addressed himself again unabashed
+      to Hugh: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your blest Bardi I want first&mdash;I&rsquo;ll take the Prince
+      after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man clearly could afford indulgence now. &ldquo;Then I left him at
+      Long&rsquo;s Hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, right near! I&rsquo;ll come back.&rdquo; And Mr. Bender&rsquo;s flight was on the
+      wings of optimism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. &ldquo;Why does the Prince
+      come, and what in the world&rsquo;s happening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father has suddenly returned&mdash;it may have to do with that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t
+      it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;and I think I don&rsquo;t care. I don&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so
+      long as you&rsquo;re right and as the greatest light of all declares you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He <i>is</i> the greatest&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: &ldquo;I
+      could see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature!
+      There, <i>before</i> the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for
+      those great moments, practically to ourselves&mdash;without Macintosh to
+      take in what was happening or any one else at all to speak of&mdash;it was
+      but a matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and <i>I</i> had
+      conquered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally you had!&rdquo;&mdash;the girl hung on him for it; &ldquo;and what was
+      happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear
+      divination, one of the divinations of genius&mdash;with every creature all
+      these ages so stupid&mdash;you were being baptized on the spot a great
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn&rsquo;t think <i>he&rsquo;s</i>
+      one: that that eminent judge couldn&rsquo;t, even with such a leg up, rise to my
+      level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,&rdquo; Hugh went on in
+      his gladness, &ldquo;what for <i>us</i> has most particularly and preciously
+      taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your reputation,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;blazes out and your fortune&rsquo;s made?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did a happy violence to his modesty. &ldquo;Well, Bardi adores intelligence
+      and takes off his hat to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you need take off yours to nobody!&rdquo;&mdash;such was Lady Grace&rsquo;s
+      proud opinion. &ldquo;But I should like to take off mine to <i>him</i>,&rdquo; she
+      added; &ldquo;which I seem to have put on&mdash;to get out and away with you&mdash;expressly
+      for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. &ldquo;Ah, we&rsquo;ll go forth
+      together to him then&mdash;thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!&mdash;and
+      you&rsquo;ll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. &ldquo;The only thing is
+      that our awful American&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he warned her with a raised hand. &ldquo;Not to speak of our awful Briton!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign, unattended,
+      who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled up and held them a
+      minute in reprehensive view&mdash;all at least till Hugh undauntedly,
+      indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;ve a small,
+      but precious document to deliver you, if you&rsquo;ll allow me to do so; which I
+      feel it important myself to place in your hand.&rdquo; He drew from his breast a
+      pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed envelope; retaining the
+      latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while Lord Theign only opposed to
+      this demonstration an unmitigated blankness. He went none the less bravely
+      on. &ldquo;I mentioned to you the last time we somewhat infelicitously met that
+      I intended to appeal to another and probably more closely qualified
+      artistic authority on the subject of your so-called Moretto; and I in fact
+      saw the picture half an hour ago with Bardi of Milan, who, there in
+      presence of it, did absolute, did ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the
+      claim I&rsquo;ve been making. I then went with him to his hotel, close at hand,
+      where he dashed me off this brief and rapid, but quite conclusive,
+      Declaration, which, if you&rsquo;ll be so good as to read it, will enable you
+      perhaps to join us in regarding the vexed question as settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship, having faced this speech without a sign, rested on the
+      speaker a somewhat more confessed intelligence, then looked hard at the
+      offered note and hard at the floor&mdash;all to avert himself actively
+      afterward and, with his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance, as
+      it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on his
+      attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his
+      companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His
+      daughter none the less lifted her voice. &ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t take what he has
+      for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?&rdquo; And then as
+      after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, &ldquo;It may be
+      so long again,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;before you&rsquo;ve a chance to do a thing I ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chance will depend on yourself!&rdquo; he returned with high dry emphasis.
+      But he held out his hand for the note Hugh had given her and with which
+      she approached him; and though face to face they seemed more separated
+      than brought near by this contact without commerce. She turned away on one
+      side when he had taken the missive, as Hugh had turned away on the other;
+      Lord Theign drew forth the contents of the envelope and broodingly and
+      inexpressively read the few lines; after which, as having done justice to
+      their sense, he thrust the paper forth again till his daughter became
+      aware and received it. She restored it to her friend while her father
+      dandled off anew, but coming round this time, almost as by a circuit of
+      the room, and meeting Hugh, who took advantage of it to repeat by a frank
+      gesture his offer of Bardi&rsquo;s attestation. Lord Theign passed with the
+      young man on this a couple of mute minutes of the same order as those he
+      had passed with Lady Grace in the same connection; their eyes dealt deeply
+      with their eyes&mdash;but to the effect of his lordship&rsquo;s accepting the
+      gift, which after another minute he had slipped into his breast-pocket. It
+      was not till then that he brought out a curt but resonant &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo;
+       While the others awaited his further pleasure he again bethought himself&mdash;then
+      he addressed Lady Grace. &ldquo;I must let Mr. Bender know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Hugh interposed, &ldquo;does know. He&rsquo;s at the present moment with
+      the author of that note at Long&rsquo;s Hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must now write him&rdquo;&mdash;and his lordship, while he spoke and
+      from where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you write <i>there?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;and his daughter indicated Lady
+      Sandgate&rsquo;s desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his view
+      on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so tiresome
+      a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and had
+      reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display of
+      some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t find things?&rdquo; Lady Grace asked&mdash;as remote from him in one
+      quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary!&rdquo; he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any further
+      surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an envelope,
+      which he addressed and brought away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like,&rdquo; said Hugh urbanely, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll carry him that myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how do you know what it consists of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. But I risk it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner&mdash;he
+      even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the
+      finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself of any
+      measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the interesting
+      object, to redeem his offer of service. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll learn,&rdquo; he simply
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And may <i>I</i> learn?&rdquo; asked Lady Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I go <i>with</i> him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme bitterness&mdash;a
+      nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were familiar, but
+      before which their first movement was always tightly to close. &ldquo;<i>With</i>
+      me, my lord,&rdquo; said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined they should open
+      and intensifying the emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his effect, and Lord Theign&rsquo;s answer, addressed to Lady Grace, made
+      indifference very comprehensive. &ldquo;You may do what ever you dreadfully
+      like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as
+      absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open for
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her
+      expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have
+      preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could yet
+      find inspiration too in the very difficulty and the old faiths themselves
+      that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth and beauty in
+      her serious young face&mdash;as it had indeed a force that, not
+      indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for longer
+      exposure to. His shift of his attitude before she went out was fairly an
+      evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter&rsquo;s made him
+      afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a fear of the
+      other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace passes from us at any
+      rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale
+      concentration&mdash;leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thanked me just now for Bardi&rsquo;s opinion after all,&rdquo; Hugh said with a
+      smile; &ldquo;and it seems to me that&mdash;after all as well&mdash;I&rsquo;ve grounds
+      for thanking you!&rdquo; On which he left his benefactor alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tit for tat!&rdquo; There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the
+      young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served his
+      turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to the
+      piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it again
+      the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally recognise
+      as Mr. Bender&rsquo;s forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising value he now
+      studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing from him an
+      articulate &ldquo;What in damnation&mdash;?&rdquo; His speculation dropped before the
+      return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room fell upon his
+      ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque into his
+      waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate appeared now in due&mdash;that is in the most happily
+      adjusted&mdash;splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter
+      and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, &ldquo;Tea will be
+      downstairs,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just parted,&rdquo; her friend replied, &ldquo;with Grace and Mr. Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Parted&rsquo; with them?&rdquo;&mdash;the ambiguity struck her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they&rsquo;ve gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;as if it were too gross&mdash;I They&rsquo;re surely
+      coming back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back to you, if you like&mdash;but not to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what are you and I,&rdquo; she tenderly argued, &ldquo;but one and the same
+      quantity? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in&mdash;well,
+      whatever they&rsquo;re doing,&rdquo; she cheerfully added, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll get beautifully
+      used to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I&rsquo;m afraid of&mdash;what such horrid matters make of
+      one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the worst then, you see&rdquo;&mdash;she maintained her optimism&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      recipient of royal attentions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said her companion, whom his honour seemed to leave comparatively
+      cold, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s simply as if the gracious Personage were coming to condole!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Impatient of the lapse of time, in any case, she assured herself again of
+      the hour. &ldquo;Well, if he only does come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John&mdash;the wretch!&rdquo; Lord Theign returned&mdash;&ldquo;will take care of
+      that: he has nailed him and will bring him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it then,&rdquo; his friend found occasion in the particular tone of
+      this reference to demand, &ldquo;what was it that, when you sent him off, John
+      spoke of you in Bond Street as specifically intending?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh he saw it now all lucidly&mdash;if not rather luridly&mdash;and thereby
+      the more tragically. &ldquo;He described me in his nasty rage as consistently&mdash;well,
+      heroic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His rage&rdquo;&mdash;she pieced it sympathetically out&mdash;&ldquo;at your
+      destroying his cherished credit with Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of it.
+      &ldquo;I had come between him and some profit that he doesn&rsquo;t confess to, but
+      that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he caught
+      the chance, to the Prince&mdash;and the People!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception of
+      it. &ldquo;By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People the
+      picture&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a sacrifice&mdash;yes!&mdash;to morbid, though respectable scruples.&rdquo;
+       To which he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene:
+      &ldquo;But I hope you&rsquo;ve nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate waited&mdash;then boldly took her line. &ldquo;None whatever! You
+      had reacted against Bender&mdash;but you hadn&rsquo;t gone so far as <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had it now all vividly before him. &ldquo;I had reacted&mdash;like a
+      gentleman; but it didn&rsquo;t thereby follow that I acted&mdash;or spoke&mdash;like
+      a demagogue; and my mind&rsquo;s a complete blank on the subject of my having
+      done so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that there only flushes through your conscience,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;the
+      fact that he has forced your hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fevered with the sore sense of it his lordship wiped his brow. &ldquo;He has
+      played me, for spite, his damned impertinent trick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She found but after a minute&mdash;for it wasn&rsquo;t easy&mdash;the right
+      word, or the least wrong, for the situation. &ldquo;Well, even if he did so
+      diabolically commit you, you still don&rsquo;t want&mdash;do you?&mdash;to back
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Resenting the suggestion, which restored all his nobler form, Lord Theign
+      fairly drew himself up. &ldquo;When did I ever in all my life back out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, never in all your life of course!&rdquo;&mdash;she dashed a bucketful at
+      the flare. &ldquo;And the picture after all&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The picture after all&rdquo;&mdash;he took her up in cold grim gallant despair&mdash;&ldquo;has
+      just been pronounced definitely priceless.&rdquo; And then to meet her gaping
+      ignorance: &ldquo;By Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s latest and apparently greatest adviser, who
+      strongly stamps it a Mantovano and whose practical affidavit I now
+      possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Lady Sandgate gaped but the more&mdash;she wondered and yearned.
+      &ldquo;Definitely priceless?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Definitely priceless.&rdquo; After which he took from its place of lurking,
+      considerately unfolding it, the goodly slip he had removed from her
+      blotting-book. &ldquo;Worth even more therefore than what Bender so blatantly
+      offers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her attention fell with interest, from the distance at which she stood, on
+      this confirmatory document, her recognition of which was not immediate.
+      &ldquo;And is that the affidavit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a cheque to your order, my lady, for ten thousand pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten thousand?&rdquo;&mdash;she echoed it with a shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drawn by some hand unknown,&rdquo; he went on quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unknown?&rdquo;&mdash;again, in her muffled joy, she let it sound out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which I found there at your desk a moment ago, and thought best, in your
+      interest, to rescue from accident or neglect; even though it be, save for
+      the single stroke of a name begun,&rdquo; he wound up with his look like a
+      playing searchlight, &ldquo;unhappily unsigned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unsigned?&rdquo;&mdash;the exhibition of her design, of her defeat, kept
+      shaking her. &ldquo;Then it isn&rsquo;t good&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a Barmecide feast, my dear!&rdquo;&mdash;he had still, her kind friend,
+      his note of grimness and also his penetration of eye. &ldquo;But who is it
+      writes you colossal cheques?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then leaves them lying about?&rdquo; Her case was so bad that you would
+      have seen how she felt she must <i>do</i> something&mdash;something quite
+      splendid. She recovered herself, she faced the situation with all her
+      bright bravery of expression and aspect; conscious, you might have
+      guessed, that she had never more strikingly embodied, on such lines, the
+      elegant, the beautiful and the true. &ldquo;Why, who can it have been but poor
+      Breckenridge too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Breckenridge&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo; Lord Theign had <i>his</i> smart echoes. &ldquo;What in
+      the world does he owe you money for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her but an instant more&mdash;she performed the great repudiation
+      quite as she might be prepared to sweep, in the Presence impending, her
+      grandest curtsey. &ldquo;<i>Not</i>, you sweet suspicious thing, for my
+      great-grandmother!&rdquo; And then as his glare didn&rsquo;t fade: &ldquo;Bender makes my
+      life a burden&mdash;for the love of my precious Lawrence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which you&rsquo;re weakly letting him grab?&rdquo;&mdash;nothing could have been
+      finer with this than Lord Theign&rsquo;s reprobation unless it had been his
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head as in bland compassion for such an idea. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t a
+      payment, you goose&mdash;it&rsquo;s a bribe! I&rsquo;ve withstood him, these trying
+      weeks, as a rock the tempest; but he wrote that and left it there, the
+      fiend, to tempt me&mdash;to corrupt me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without putting his name?&rdquo;&mdash;her companion again turned over the
+      cheque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bethought herself, clearly with all her genius, as to this anomaly,
+      and the light of reality broke. &ldquo;He must have been interrupted in the
+      artful act&mdash;he sprang up with such a bound at Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s news. At
+      once then&mdash;for his interest in it&mdash;he hurried off, leaving the
+      cheque forgotten and unfinished.&rdquo; She smiled more intensely, her eyes
+      attached, as from fascination, to the morsel of paper still handled by her
+      friend. &ldquo;But of course on his next visit he&rsquo;ll <i>add</i> his great
+      signature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil he will!&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign, with the highest spirit, tore
+      the crisp token into several pieces, which fluttered, as worthless now as
+      pure snowflakes, to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, ay!&rdquo;&mdash;it drew from her a wail of which the character, for
+      its sharp inconsequence, was yet comic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This renewed his stare at her. &ldquo;Do <i>you</i> want to back out? I mean
+      from your noble stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As quickly, however, she had saved herself. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather do even what
+      you&rsquo;re doing&mdash;offer my treasure to the Thingumbob!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was touched by this even to sympathy. &ldquo;Will you then <i>join</i> me in
+      setting the example of a great donation&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the What-do-you-call-it?&rdquo; she extravagantly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I call it,&rdquo; he said with dignity, &ldquo;the &lsquo;National Gallery.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She closed her eyes as with a failure of breath. &ldquo;Ah my dear friend&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would convince me,&rdquo; he went on, insistent and persuasive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the sincerity of my affection?&rdquo;&mdash;she drew nearer to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would comfort me&rdquo;&mdash;he was satisfied with his own expression. Yet
+      in a moment, when she had come all rustlingly and fragrantly close, &ldquo;It
+      would captivate me,&rdquo; he handsomely added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would captivate you?&rdquo; It was for <i>her</i>, we should have seen, to
+      be satisfied with his expression; and, with our more informed observation
+      of all it was a question of her giving up, she would have struck us as
+      subtly bargaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gallantly amplified. &ldquo;It would peculiarly&mdash;by which I mean it
+      would so naturally&mdash;unite us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, that was all she wanted. &ldquo;Then for a complete union with you&mdash;of
+      fact as well as of fond fancy!&rdquo; she smiled&mdash;&ldquo;there&rsquo;s nothing, even to
+      my one ewe lamb, I&rsquo;m not ready to surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we don&rsquo;t surrender,&rdquo; he urged&mdash;&ldquo;we enjoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she understood: &ldquo;with the glory of our grand gift thrown in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We quite swagger,&rdquo; he gravely observed&mdash;&ldquo;though even swaggering
+      would after this be dull without you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll <i>swagger</i> with you!&rdquo; she cried as if it quite settled and
+      made up for everything; and then impatiently, as she beheld Lord John,
+      whom the door had burst open to admit: &ldquo;The Prince?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince!&rdquo;&mdash;the young man launched it as a call to arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had fallen apart on the irruption, the pair discovered, but she
+      flashed straight at her lover: &ldquo;Then we can swagger now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had reached the open door. &ldquo;I meet him below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Demurring, debating, however, she stayed him a moment. &ldquo;But oughtn&rsquo;t I&mdash;in
+      my own house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship caught her meaning. &ldquo;You mean he may think&mdash;?&rdquo; But he as
+      easily pronounced. &ldquo;He shall think the Truth!&rdquo; And with a kiss of his hand
+      to her he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, who had gazed in some wonder at these demonstrations, was
+      quickly about to follow, but she checked him with an authority she had
+      never before used and which was clearly the next moment to prove
+      irresistible. &ldquo;Lord John, be so good as to stop.&rdquo; Looking about at the
+      condition of a room on the point of receiving so august a character, she
+      observed on the floor the fragments of the torn cheque, to which she
+      sharply pointed. &ldquo;And please pick up that litter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THE END. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
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+  </body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7344 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Outcry
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21969]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTCRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTCRY
+
+By Henry James
+
+1911
+
+
+BOOK FIRST
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"NO, my lord," Banks had replied, "no stranger has yet arrived. But
+I'll see if any one has come in--or who has." As he spoke, however, he
+observed Lady Sandgate's approach to the hall by the entrance giving
+upon the great terrace, and addressed her on her passing the threshold.
+"Lord John, my lady." With which, his duty majestically performed, he
+retired to the quarter--that of the main access to the spacious centre
+of the house--from which he had ushered the visitor.
+
+This personage, facing Lady Sandgate as she paused there a moment framed
+by the large doorway to the outer expanses, the small pinkish paper of
+a folded telegram in her hand, had partly before him, as an immediate
+effect, the high wide interior, still breathing the quiet air and the
+fair pannelled security of the couple of hushed and stored centuries, in
+which certain of the reputed treasures of Dedborough Place beautifully
+disposed themselves; and then, through ample apertures and beyond
+the stately stone outworks of the great seated and supported
+house--uplifting terrace, balanced, balustraded steps and containing
+basins where splash and spray were at rest--all the rich composed
+extension of garden and lawn and park. An ancient, an assured elegance
+seemed to reign; pictures and preserved "pieces," cabinets and
+tapestries, spoke, each for itself, of fine selection and high
+distinction; while the originals of the old portraits, in more or less
+deserved salience, hung over the happy scene as the sworn members of a
+great guild might have sat, on the beautiful April day, at one of their
+annual feasts.
+
+Such was the setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman
+of considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided
+with that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such
+complacent company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists
+and turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue
+or easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no
+point more so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane
+future certain to be more and more offensive to women of real quality
+and of formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue to
+the antique confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, had
+given way to curiosity--that is to speculation--however disguised. She
+might have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid,
+but she would presumably have confessed, if put on her trial for
+restlessness or for intelligence, that she _was_, after all, almost
+clever enough to be vulgar. Unmistakably, moreover, she had still, with
+her fine stature, her disciplined figure, her cherished complexion, her
+bright important hair, her kind bold eyes and her large constant smile,
+the degree of beauty that might pretend to put every other question by.
+
+Lord John addressed her as with a significant manner that he might have
+had--that of a lack of need, or even of interest, for any explanation
+about herself: it would have been clear that he was apt to discriminate
+with sharpness among possible claims on his attention. "I luckily find
+_you_ at least, Lady Sandgate--they tell me Theign's off somewhere."
+
+She replied as with the general habit, on her side, of bland
+reassurance; it mostly had easier consequences--for herself--than the
+perhaps more showy creation of alarm. "Only off in the park--open to-day
+for a school-feast from Dedborough, as you may have made out from the
+avenue; giving good advice, at the top of his lungs, to four hundred and
+fifty children."
+
+It was such a scene, and such an aspect of the personage so accounted
+for, as Lord John could easily take in, and his recognition familiarly
+smiled. "Oh he's so great on such occasions that I'm sorry to be missing
+it."
+
+"I've _had_ to miss it," Lady Sandgate sighed--"that is to miss the
+peroration. I've just left them, but he had even then been going on for
+twenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you'll
+find him, poor dear victim of duty, still _at_ it."
+
+"I'll warrant--for, as I often tell him, he makes the idea of one's duty
+an awful thing to his friends by the extravagance with which he always
+overdoes it." And the image itself appeared in some degree to prompt
+this particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider. "I
+should like to come in for the grand _finale_, but I rattled over in a
+great measure to meet a party, as he calls himself--and calls, if you
+please, even me!--who's motoring down by appointment and whom I think I
+should be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in the hope
+of a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine _that!_"
+
+"I can imagine it perfectly," said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently no
+perceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. "It quite sticks
+out of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waiting
+to see. But you haven't then," she added, "come from town?"
+
+"No, I'm for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly
+lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring."
+
+Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no
+longer than was decent. "But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her
+preference, just settling down to bridge."
+
+"Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day
+gets up----!"
+
+"Which the Duchess never does?"--Lady Sand-gate only asked to be allowed
+to show how she saw it. "She fights to the last, invincible; gathering
+in the spoils and only routing her friends?" She abounded genially in
+her privileged vision. "Ah yes--we know something of that!"
+
+Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye,
+fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in
+compassion. "You too then?"
+
+She wouldn't, however, too meanly narrow it down. "Well, in this house
+generally; where I'm so often made welcome, you see, and where----"
+
+"Where," he broke in at once, "your jolly good footing quite sticks out
+of _you_, perhaps you'll let me say!"
+
+She clearly didn't mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal
+with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only
+decide to deal quite simply. "You can't say more than I feel--and am
+proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they're worried."
+
+This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for
+him, if she would, all the facts equally. "And they're worried now,
+you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of
+making a great noise if she isn't paid? I ought to mind speaking of
+that truth," he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of
+delicacy; "but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a
+bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here."
+
+Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. "Because poor Kitty Imber--who
+should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as
+I've had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible
+big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to 'look to'
+even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly
+did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home."
+
+She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing
+to the note of free inquiry in Lord John's reply. "You mean that our
+lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this
+time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?"
+
+His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide
+after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it.
+"Well, in that set----!"
+
+"My mother's set?" However, if she could smile he could laugh. "I'm much
+obliged!"
+
+"Oh," she qualified, "I don't criticise her Grace; but the ways and
+traditions and tone of this house----"
+
+"Make it"--he took her sense straight from her--"the house in England
+where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder
+daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts--to say nothing of
+others!--and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of
+her reputation? Exactly so," he went on before she could meet it with a
+diplomatic ambiguity; "and just that, I assure you, is a large part of
+the reason I like to come here--since I personally don't come with any
+such associations."
+
+"Not the association of bankruptcy--no; as you represent the payee!"
+
+The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost
+as a liberty taken. "How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I
+represent?"
+
+She bethought herself--but briefly and bravely. "Well, don't you
+represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don't
+you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than _one_
+perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy
+old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our
+admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending
+yourself to dear Grace?"
+
+Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent
+infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing
+his chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough on
+some felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck,
+the strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with the
+young woman to whom our friends' reference thus broadened still a
+vague quantity for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quite
+possible--and this despite an odd element in him that you might have
+described as a certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son of
+a noble matron recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed in
+no immediate or aggressive manner any imputable private heritage
+or privilege of arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiated
+fineness if his lustre hadn't been a little prematurely dimmed. Active
+yet insubstantial, he was slight and short and a trifle too punctually,
+though not yet quite lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his
+eyebrow, the finish of his facial line, the economy of "treatment"
+by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his
+meagre mouth to smile its spareness away.
+
+He had pleasant but hard little eyes--they glittered, handsomely,
+without promise--and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear
+instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and
+immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living
+at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied
+air which still suggested sharp wants--and this was withal the
+ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly,
+you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he
+really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his
+interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable.
+
+"May I ask what you mean," he inquired of Lady Sandgate, "by the
+question of my 'arranging'?"
+
+"I mean that you're the very clever son of a very clever mother."
+
+"Oh, I'm less clever than you think," he replied--"if you really think
+it of me at all; and mamma's a good sight cleverer!"
+
+"Than I think?" Lady Sandgate echoed. "Why, she's the person in all our
+world I would gladly most resemble--for her general ability to put what
+she wants through." But she at once added: "That is _if_--!" pausing on
+it with a smile.
+
+"If what then?"
+
+"Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of
+cleverness without exception--and to have them," said Lady Sandgate, "to
+the very end."
+
+He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. "The
+very end of what?"
+
+She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be,
+and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. "Say of her so
+wonderfully successful _general_ career."
+
+It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations
+short. "When you're as clever as she you'll be as good." To which he
+subjoined: "You don't begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good
+she is." This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might
+appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take--he was so prompt
+with a more explicit challenge. "What is it exactly that you suppose
+yourself to know?"
+
+Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided
+to take everything. "I always proceed on the assumption that I know
+everything, because that makes people tell me."
+
+"It wouldn't make we," he quite rang out, "if I didn't want to! But as
+it happens," he allowed, "there's a question it would be convenient
+to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional
+relation with him, extremely in Theign's confidence."
+
+She waited a little as for more. "Is that your question--_whether_ I
+am?"
+
+"No, but if you are you'll the better answer it"
+
+She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. "We're the best
+friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman
+with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here,
+as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I'm
+happy to say that--for my pleasure when I'm really curious--this doesn't
+close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things."
+
+"Then I hope you've ground for believing that if I go the right way
+about it he's likely to listen to me."
+
+Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive. "The
+person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you must
+have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful
+wheedler, his elder daughter."
+
+"Lady Imber's _here?_" Lord John alertly asked.
+
+"She arrived last night and--as we've other visitors--seems to have set
+up a side-show in the garden."
+
+"Then she'll 'draw' of course immensely, as she always does. But her
+sister won't be in that case with her," the young man supposed.
+
+"Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well
+may," said Lady Sandgate, "but I must tell you that when I last noticed
+them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away."
+
+Lord John figured it a moment. "Lady Imber"--he ironically enlarged the
+figure--"_can_ lead people away."
+
+"Oh, dear Grace," his companion returned, "happens fortunately to be
+firm!"
+
+This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. "Not against
+_me_, however--you don't mean? You don't think she has a beastly
+prejudice----?"
+
+"Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what
+mayn't--have happened between you."
+
+"Well, I try to judge"--and such candour as was possible to Lord John
+seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. "But I'm in fear of seeing her
+too much as I want to see her."
+
+There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to
+meet "Are you absolutely in earnest about her?"
+
+"Of course I am--why shouldn't I be? But," he said with impatience, "I
+want help."
+
+"Very well then, that's what Lady Imber's giving you." And as it
+appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense,
+she produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in
+a degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted
+control of stray signs and shy lights. "By telling her, by bringing it
+home to her, that if she'll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess
+will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty."
+
+Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet
+regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.
+"Well, and by _me_." To which he added with more of a challenge in it:
+"But you really know what my mother will do?"
+
+"By my system," Lady Sandgate smiled, "you see I've guessed. What your
+mother will do is what brought you over!"
+
+"Well, it's that," he allowed--"and something else."
+
+"Something else?" she derisively echoed. "I should think 'that,' for an
+ardent lover, would have been enough."
+
+"Ah, but it's all one Job! I mean it's one idea," he hastened to
+explain--"if you think Lady Imber's really acting on her."
+
+"Mightn't you go and see?"
+
+"I would in a moment if I hadn't to look out for another matter too."
+And he renewed his attention to his watch. "I mean getting straight at
+my American, the party I just mentioned------"
+
+But she had already taken him up. "You too have an American and a
+'party,' and yours also motors down----?"
+
+"Mr. Breckenridge Bender." Lord John named him with a shade of elation.
+
+She gaped at the fuller light "You _know_ my Breckenridge?--who I hoped
+was coming for me!"
+
+Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. "Had he told you so?"
+
+She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since
+her entrance. "He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten minutes
+ago out there, has brought me in to receive him."
+
+The young man read out this missive. "'Failing to find you in Bruton
+Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.'" It did
+involve an ambiguity. "Why, he has been engaged these three days
+to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my
+business."
+
+Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich
+scene. "Then why does he say it's me he's pursuing?"
+
+He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced
+monopoly. "My dear lady, he's pursuing expensive works of art."
+
+"By which you imply that I'm one?" She might have been wound up by her
+disappointment to almost any irony.
+
+"I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what he
+arranged with me about," Lord John explained, "was that he should
+see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in
+particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I've been thus
+glad to assist him."
+
+This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the
+listener's mystification. "Then why--this whole week that I've been in
+the house--hasn't our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?"
+
+"Because our good friend here has had no reason"--Lord John could treat
+it now as simple enough. "Good as he is in all ways, he's so best of
+all about showing the house and its contents that I haven't even thought
+necessary to write him that I'm introducing Breckenridge."
+
+"I should have been happy to introduce him," Lady Sandgate just
+quavered--"if I had at all known he wanted it."
+
+Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to
+pronounce it a trifle he didn't care a fig for. "I surrender you that
+privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I've seemed to you
+to snatch it from you." To which Lord John added, as with liberality
+unrestricted, "But I've been taking him about to see what's worth
+while--as only last week to Lady Lappington's Longhi."
+
+This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady
+Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. "Her Longhi?"
+
+"Why, don't you know her great Venetian family group, the
+What-do-you-call-'ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for
+which he paid her her price before he left the house."
+
+She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her
+wistful thought: "Seven full-length figures? Her price?"
+
+"Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows," said Lord John, "what he
+wants."
+
+"And does he want only"--her wonder grew and grew--
+
+"What-do-you-call-'ems'?"
+
+"He most usually wants what he can't have." Lord John made scarce more
+of it than that. "But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington
+went _at_ him."
+
+It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. "How
+horrible--at the rate things are leaving us!" But this was far from the
+end of her interest. "And is that the way he pays?"
+
+"Before he leaves the house?" Lord John lived it amusedly over. "Well,
+_she_ took care of that."
+
+"How incredibly vulgar!" It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still
+other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington's
+case, though she didn't glance at this. "He makes the most scandalous
+eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother." And then as richly to
+enlighten any blankness: "My tremendous Lawrence, don't you know?--in
+her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily
+speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints:
+universally considered the masterpiece of the artist."
+
+Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in
+which he wasn't interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind
+it. "And are you going to _sell_ the masterpiece of the artist?"
+
+She held her head high. "I've indignantly refused--for all his pressing
+me so hard."
+
+"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 may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything."
+
+These things might be, Lady Sandgate's face and gesture apparently
+signified; but another question diverted her. "You're clearly a
+wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you're on such
+an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?"
+
+"'Interested'?" he echoed; though it wasn't to gain time, he showed, for
+he would in that case have taken more. "To the extent, you mean, of my
+little percentage?" And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
+smile on him: "Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about your
+great-grandmother--you've nothing to place?"
+
+It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when
+she spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared.
+"I ask because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to
+the--how shall I name it?--the common weal; and because of my general
+strong feeling that we don't want any more of our national treasures
+(for I regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about
+the world."
+
+"There's much in this country and age," he replied in an off-hand
+manner, "to be said about _that_," The present, however, was not the
+time to say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it
+with a smile that signified sufficiency. "To my friends, I need scarcely
+remark to you, I'm all the friend."
+
+She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to
+the terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this
+functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy
+interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as
+she turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. "It's the friend
+then clearly who's wanted in the park."
+
+She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand
+a missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her
+companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where
+she had left it. "By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you'll
+join them below the terrace."
+
+"Ah, Grace hopes," said Lady Sandgate for the young man's encouragement.
+"There you are!"
+
+Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. "I rush
+to Lady Grace, but don't demoralise Bender!" And he went forth to the
+terrace and the gardens.
+
+Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function.
+"Will you have tea, my lady?"
+
+This appeared to strike her as premature. "Oh, thanks--when they all
+come in."
+
+"They'll scarcely _all_, my lady"--he indicated respectfully that he
+knew what he was talking about. "There's tea in her ladyship's tent;
+but," he qualified, "it has also been ordered for the saloon."
+
+"Ah then," she said cheerfully, "Mr. Bender will be glad--!" And she
+became, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banks
+considered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by the
+footman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. "Here
+he must be, my lady." With which he retired to the spacious opposite
+quarter, where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed,
+retreated as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, received
+the many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord John's
+irritating confidence and of Lady Lappington's massive cheque.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both hands
+out, she had at once gone on: "You'll of course have tea?--in the
+saloon."
+
+But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolve
+before sounding. "Why; the very first thing?"
+
+She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. "Ah, have it the
+last if you like!"
+
+"You see your English teas--!" he pleaded as he looked about him, so
+immediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents that
+his friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which he
+must have swept Lady Lappington's inferior scene.
+
+"They're too much for you?"
+
+"Well, they're too many. I think I've had two or three on the road--at
+any rate my man did. I like to do business before--" But his sequence
+dropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
+
+She divertedly picked it up. "Before tea, Mr. Bender?"
+
+"Before everything, Lady Sandgate." He was immensely genial, but a
+queer, quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safe--for
+himself.
+
+"Then you've _come_ to do business?" Her appeal and her emphasis melted
+as into a caress--which, however, spent itself on his large high person
+as he consented, with less of demonstration but more of attention, to
+look down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by an intenser
+note. "To tell me you _will_ treat?"
+
+Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having received
+benefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shone
+as with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointed
+sanity and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair of
+very ample wings--wide pinions for the present conveniently folded, but
+that he would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spread
+for great flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable,
+even a worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had not
+the affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular.
+Fortune, felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at his
+cradle-side--whatever the ministering power might have been--had simply
+overlooked and neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showed
+not so much for perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neither
+formed nor fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have been
+done for it but what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush and
+the looking-glass could officiously do; it had in short resisted
+any possibly finer attrition at the hands of fifty years of offered
+experience. It had developed on the lines, if lines they could be
+called, of the mere scoured and polished and initialled "mug" rather
+than to any effect of a composed physiognomy; though we must at the
+same time add that its wearer carried this featureless disk as with the
+warranted confidence that might have attended a warning headlight or
+a glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named it, showed you at
+least where he was, and most often that he was straight upon you. It
+was fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance that Lady
+Sandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that he
+soon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. "For your
+grandmother, Lady Sandgate?" he then returned.
+
+"For my grandmother's _mother_, Mr. Bender--the most beautiful woman
+of her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as you
+quite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street."
+
+Mr. Bender bethought himself further--yet drawing it out; as if the
+familiar fact of his being "made up to" had never had such special
+softness and warmth of pressure. "Do you want very, _very_ much----?"
+
+She had already caught him up. "'Very, very much' for her? Well, Mr.
+Bender," she smilingly replied, "I think I should like her full value."
+
+"I mean"--he kindly discriminated--"do you want so badly to work her
+off?"
+
+"It would be an intense convenience to me--so much so that your telegram
+made me at once fondly hope you'd be arriving to conclude."
+
+Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was the
+mere frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient range
+elsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kind
+even while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one of
+the several, the famous Dedborough pictures--stray specimens, by every
+presumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. "'Conclude'?" he
+echoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. "You ladies want
+to get there before the road's so much as laid or the country's safe! Do
+you know what this _here_ is?" he at once went on.
+
+"Oh, you can't have _that!_" she cried as with full authority--"and
+you must really understand that you can't have everything. You mustn't
+expect to ravage Dedborough."
+
+He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. "I guess it's a bogus
+Cuyp--but I know Lord Theign _has_ things. He won't do business?"
+
+"He's not in the least, and can never be, in my tight place," Lady
+Sandgate replied; "but he's as proud as he's kind, dear man, and
+as solid as he's proud; so that if you came down under a different
+impression--!" Well, she could only exhale the folly of his error with
+an unction that represented, whatever he might think of it, all her
+competence to answer for their host.
+
+He scarce thought of it enough, on any side, however, to be diverted
+from prior dispositions. "I came on an understanding that I should find
+my friend Lord John, and that Lord Theign would, on his introduction,
+kindly let me look round. But being before lunch in Bruton Street I
+knocked at your door----"
+
+"For another look," she quickly interposed, "at my Lawrence?"
+
+"For another look at _you_, Lady Sandgate--your great-grandmother wasn't
+required. Informed you were here, and struck with the coincidence of my
+being myself presently due," he went on, "I despatched you my wire, on
+coming away, just to keep up your spirits."
+
+"You _don't_ keep them up, you depress them to anguish," she almost
+passionately protested, "when you don't tell me you'll treat!"
+
+He paused in his preoccupation, his perambulation, conscious evidently
+of no reluctance that was worth a scene with so charming and so hungry
+a woman. "Well, if it's a question of your otherwise suffering torments,
+may I have another interview with the old lady?"
+
+"Dear Mr. Bender, she's in the flower of her youth; she only yearns for
+interviews, and you may have," Lady Sandgate earnestly declared, "as
+many as you like."
+
+"Oh, you must be there to protect me!"
+
+"Then as soon as I return----!"
+
+"Well,"--it clearly cost him little to say--"I'll come right round."
+
+She joyously registered the vow. "Only meanwhile then, please, never a
+word!"
+
+"Never a word, certainly. But where all this time," Mr. Bender asked,
+"is Lord John?"
+
+Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a young
+woman who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorway
+to the terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature and
+simply dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade of
+a large hat surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyes
+had vaguely questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to the
+gentleman forming the subject of their inquiry: "Lady Grace must know."
+At this the young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced the
+visitor. "My dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender."
+
+The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation,
+but she had urbanity to spare. "Of whom Lord John has told me," she
+returned, "and whom I'm glad to see. Lord John," she explained to his
+waiting friend, "is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big
+Temperance school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if
+you care to go out--!" She gave him in fine his choice.
+
+But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn't
+the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his
+prudence. "Are there any pictures in the park?"
+
+Lady Grace's facial response represented less humour perhaps, but more
+play. "We find our park itself rather a picture."
+
+Mr. Bender's own levity at any rate persisted. "With a big Temperance
+school-feast?"
+
+"Mr. Bender's a great judge of pictures," Lady Sandgate said as to
+forestall any impression of excessive freedom.
+
+"Will there be more tea?" he pursued, almost presuming on this.
+
+It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. "Oh, there'll
+be plenty of tea."
+
+This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. "Well, Lady Grace, I'm after
+pictures, but I take them 'neat.' May I go right round here?"
+
+"Perhaps, love," Lady Sandgate at once said, "you'll let me show him."
+
+"A moment, dear"--Lady Grace gently demurred. "Do go round," she
+conformably added to Mr. Bender; "take your ease and your time.
+Everything's open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,
+you'll have the place to yourself."
+
+He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. "I'll be in
+clover--sure!" But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture,
+which he could fluently enough name. "And I'll find 'The Beautiful
+Duchess of Waterbridge'?"
+
+She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the
+quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. "At the
+very end of _those_ rooms."
+
+He had wide eyes for the vista. "About thirty in a row, hey?" And he was
+already off. "I'll work right through!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. "Lord John
+warned me he was 'funny'--but you already know him?"
+
+There might have been a sense of embarrassment in the way in which, as
+to gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the small
+picture pronounced upon by Mr. Bender. "He thinks your little Cuyp a
+fraud."
+
+"That one?" Lady Grace could but stare. "The wretch!" However, she made,
+without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous question.
+"You've met him before?"
+
+"Just a little--in town. Being 'after pictures'" Lady Sandgate
+explained, "he has been after my great-grandmother."
+
+"She," said Lady Grace with amusement, "must have found him funny! But
+he can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord
+John, and while you, if you'll be so good, go back to support father--in
+the hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that
+he complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as
+sneaking away."
+
+Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. "I delight in
+his triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it's a
+question of support, aren't you yourself failing him quite as much?"
+
+This had, however, no effect on the girl's confidence. "Ah, my dear, I'm
+not at all the same thing, and as I'm the person in the world he least
+misses--" Well, such a fact spoke for itself.
+
+"You've been free to return and wait for Lord John?"--that was the
+sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as
+speaking.
+
+The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though
+very quietly, to correct her. "I've not come back to wait for Lord
+John."
+
+"Then he hasn't told you--if you've talked--with what idea he has come?"
+
+Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.
+"Kitty has told me--what it suits her to pretend to suppose."
+
+"And Kitty's pretensions and suppositions always go with what
+happens--at the moment, among all her wonderful happenings--to suit
+her?"
+
+Lady Grace let that question answer itself--she took the case up further
+on. "What I can't make out is why this _should_ so suit her!"
+
+"And what _I_ can't!" said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and
+turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless
+presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. "Do you like
+him enough to risk the chance of Kitty's being for once right?"
+
+Lady Grace gave it a thought--with which she moved away. "I don't know
+how much I like him!"
+
+"Nor how little!" cried her friend, who evidently found amusement in the
+tone of it. "And you're not disposed to take the time to find out? He's
+at least better than the others."
+
+"The 'others'?"--Lady Grace was blank for them.
+
+"The others of his set."
+
+"Oh, his set! That wouldn't be difficult--by what I imagine of some of
+them. But he means well enough," the girl added; "he's very charming and
+does me great honour."
+
+It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief
+arrest. "Then may I tell your father?"
+
+This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the
+subject. "Tell my father, please, that I'm expecting Mr. Crimble; of
+whom I've spoken to him even if he doesn't remember, and who bicycles
+this afternoon ten miles over from where he's staying--with some people
+we don't know--to look at the pictures, about which he's awfully keen."
+
+Lady Sandgate took it in. "Ah, like Mr. Bender?"
+
+"No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender."
+
+This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought "May I ask
+then--if one's to meet him--who he is?"
+
+"Oh, father knows--or ought to--that I sat next him, in London, a month
+ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and
+nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of
+Connoisseurship--which is upsetting, as perhaps you're not aware, all
+the old-fashioned canons of art-criticism, everything we've stupidly
+thought right and held dear; that he was to spend Easter in these parts,
+and that he should like greatly to be allowed some day to come over and
+make acquaintance with our things. I told him," Lady Grace wound
+up, "that nothing would be easier; a note from him arrived before
+dinner----"
+
+Lady Sandgate jumped the rest "And it's for him you've come in."
+
+"It's for him I've come in," the girl assented with serenity.
+
+"Very good--though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first just
+tell me _this_--whether when you sent in ten minutes ago for Lord John
+to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?" And she followed
+it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. "Was it because you knew
+why he had arrived?"
+
+The young friend hesitated still. "'Why '?"
+
+"So particularly to speak to you."
+
+"Since he was expected and mightn't know where I was," Lady Grace said
+after an instant, "I wanted naturally to be civil to him."
+
+"And had he time there to tell you," Lady Sand-gate asked, "how very
+civil he wants to be to you?"
+
+"No, only to tell me that his friend--who's off there--was coming; for
+Kitty at once appropriated him and was still in possession when I came
+away." Then, as deciding at last on perfect frankness, Lady Grace went
+on: "If you want to know, I sent for news of him because Kitty insisted
+on my doing so; saying, so very oddly and quite in her own way, that she
+herself didn't wish to 'appear in it.' She had done nothing but say to
+me for an hour, rather worryingly, what you've just said--that it's
+me he's what, like Mr. Bender, she calls 'after'; but as soon as
+he appeared she pounced on him, and I left him--I assure you quite
+resignedly--in her hands."
+
+"She wants"--it was easy for Lady Sandgate to remark--"to talk of you to
+him."
+
+"I don't know _what_ she wants," the girl replied as with rather a tired
+patience; "Kitty wants so many things at once. She always wants money,
+in quantities, to begin with--and all to throw so horribly away; so that
+whenever I see her 'in' so very deep with any one I always imagine her
+appealing for some new tip as to how it's to be come by."
+
+"Kitty's an abyss, I grant you, and with my disinterested devotion to
+your father--in requital of all his kindness to me since Lord Sandgate's
+death and since your mother's--I can never be too grateful to you, my
+dear, for your being so different a creature. But what is she going to
+gain financially," Lady Sand-gate pursued with a strong emphasis on
+her adverb, "by working up our friend's confidence in your listening to
+him--if you _are_ to listen?"
+
+"I haven't in the least engaged to listen," said Lady Grace--"it will
+depend on the music he makes!" But she added with light cynicism:
+"Perhaps she's to gain a commission!"
+
+"On his fairly getting you?" And then as the girl assented by silence:
+"Is he in a position to pay her one?" Lady Sandgate asked.
+
+"I dare say the Duchess is!"
+
+"But do you see the Duchess _producing_ money--with all that Kitty, as
+we're not ignorant, owes her? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds!"--Lady
+Sandgate piled them up.
+
+Her young friend's gesture checked it. "Ah, don't tell me how many--it's
+too sad and too ugly and too wrong!" To which, however, Lady Grace
+added: "But perhaps that will be just her way!" And then as her
+companion seemed for the moment not quite to follow: "By letting Kitty
+off her debt."
+
+"You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?"
+
+"Kitty goes free."
+
+"She has her creditor's release?"
+
+"For every shilling."
+
+"And if he only fails?"
+
+"Why then of course," said now quite lucid Lady Grace, "she throws
+herself more than ever on poor father."
+
+"Poor father indeed!"--Lady Sandgate richly sighed it
+
+It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess.
+"Yes--but he after all and in spite of everything adores her."
+
+"To the point, you mean"--for Lady Sandgate could clearly but
+wonder--"of really sacrificing you?"
+
+The weight of Lady Grace's charming deep eyes on her face made her
+pause while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange
+determined in the girl a grave appeal. "You think I _should_ be
+sacrificed if I married him?"
+
+Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly.
+"_Could_ you marry him?"
+
+Lady Grace waited a moment "Do you mean for Kitty?"
+
+"For himself even--if they should convince you, among them, that he
+cares for you."
+
+Lady Grace had another delay. "Well, he's his awful mother's son."
+
+"Yes--but you wouldn't marry his mother."
+
+"No--but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately
+conscious of her."
+
+"Even when," Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, "she so markedly likes
+you?"
+
+This determined in the girl a fine impatience. "She doesn't 'like' me,
+she only _wants_ me--which is a very different thing; wants me for
+my father's so particularly beautiful position, and my mother's so
+supremely great people, and for everything we have been and have done,
+and still are and still have: except of course poor not-at-all-model
+Kitty."
+
+To this luminous account of the matter Lady Sand-gate turned as to a
+genial sun-burst. "I see indeed--for the general immaculate connection."
+
+The words had no note of irony, but Lady Grace, in her great
+seriousness, glanced with deprecation at the possibility. "Well, we
+_haven't_ had false notes. We've scarcely even had bad moments."
+
+"Yes, you've been beatific!"--Lady Sandgate enviously, quite ruefully,
+felt it. But any further treatment of the question was checked by the
+re-entrance of the footman--a demonstration explained by the concomitant
+appearance of a young man in eyeglasses and with the ends of his
+trousers clipped together as for cycling. "This must be your friend,"
+she had only time to say to the daughter of the house; with which, alert
+and reminded of how she was awaited elsewhere, she retreated before her
+companion's visitor, who had come in with his guide from the vestibule.
+She passed away to the terrace and the gardens, Mr. Hugh Crimble's
+announced name ringing in her ears--to some effect that we are as yet
+not qualified to discern.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Lady Grace had turned to meet Mr. Hugh Crimble, whose pleasure in at
+once finding her lighted his keen countenance and broke into easy words.
+"So awfully kind of you--in the midst of the great doings I noticed--to
+have found a beautiful minute for me."
+
+"I left the great doings, which are almost over, to every one's relief,
+I think," the girl returned, "so that your precious time shouldn't be
+taken to hunt for me."
+
+It was clearly for him, on this bright answer, as if her white hand
+were holding out the perfect flower of felicity. "You came in from your
+revels on purpose--with the same charity you showed me from that first
+moment?" They stood smiling at each other as in an exchange of sympathy
+already confessed--and even as if finding that their relation had grown
+during the lapse of contact; she recognising the effect of what they had
+originally felt as bravely as he might name it. What the fine, slightly
+long oval of her essentially quiet face--quiet in spite of certain vague
+depths of reference to forces of the strong high order, forces involved
+and implanted, yet also rather spent in the process--kept in range
+from under her redundant black hat was the strength of expression, the
+directness of communication, that her guest appeared to borrow from
+the unframed and unattached nippers unceasingly perched, by their
+mere ground-glass rims, as she remembered, on the bony bridge of his
+indescribably authoritative (since it was at the same time decidedly
+inquisitive) young nose. She must, however, also have embraced in this
+contemplation, she must more or less again have interpreted, his main
+physiognomic mark, the degree to which his clean jaw was underhung
+and his lower lip protruded; a lapse of regularity made evident by a
+suppression of beard and moustache as complete as that practised by Mr.
+Bender--though without the appearance consequent in the latter's case,
+that of the flagrantly vain appeal in the countenance for some other
+exhibition of a history, of a process of production, than this so
+superficial one. With the interested and interesting girl sufficiently
+under our attention while we thus try to evoke her, we may even make out
+some wonder in her as to why the so perceptibly protrusive lower lip of
+this acquaintance of an hour or two should positively have contributed
+to his being handsome instead of much more logically interfering with
+it. We might in fact in such a case even have followed her into another
+and no less refined a speculation--the question of whether the surest
+seat of his good looks mightn't after all be his high, fair, if somewhat
+narrow, forehead, crowned with short crisp brown hair and which, after
+a fashion of its own, predominated without overhanging. He spoke after
+they had stood just face to face almost long enough for awkwardness. "I
+haven't forgotten one item of your kindness to me on that rather bleak
+occasion."
+
+"Bleak do you call it?" she laughed. "Why I found it, rather,
+tropical--'lush.' My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of
+the White City."
+
+"Then you made it doubtless bleak for _him_, let us say. _I_ couldn't
+let you alone, I remember, about _this_--it was like a shipwrecked
+signal to a sail on the horizon." "This" obviously meant for the young
+man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender, to be
+conscious of a thick solicitation of the eye--and much more
+than he, doubtless, of a tug at the imagination; and he
+broke--characteristically, you would have been sure--into a great free
+gaiety of recognition.
+
+"Oh, we've nothing particular in the hall," Lady Grace amiably objected.
+
+"Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I'm an ogre," he said--"before a
+new and rare feast!"
+
+She happily took up his figure. "Then won't you begin--as a first
+course--with tea after your ride? If the other, that is--for there has
+been an ogre before you--has left any."
+
+"Some tea, with pleasure"--he looked all his longing; "though when you
+talk of a fellow-feaster I should have supposed that, on such a day
+as this especially, you'd find yourselves running a continuous _table
+d'hote_."
+
+"Ah, we can't work sports in our gallery and saloon--the banging or
+whacking and shoving amusements that are all most people care for;
+unless, perhaps," Lady Grace went on, "your own peculiar one, as I
+understand you, of playing football with the old benighted traditions
+and attributions you everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old
+idiotic superstitions."
+
+Hugh Crimble went more than half-way to meet this description of his
+fondest activity; he indeed even beckoned it on. "The names and stories
+and styles--the so often vain legend, not to be too invidious--of author
+or subject or school?" But he had a drop, no less, as from the sense of a
+cause sometimes lost. "Ah, that's a game at which we _all_ can play!"
+
+"Though scarcely," Lady Grace suggested, "at which we all can score."
+
+The words appeared indeed to take meaning from his growing impression
+of the place and its charm--of the number of objects, treasures of art,
+that pressed for appreciation of their importance. "Certainly," he said,
+"no one can ever have scored much on sacred spots of _this_ order--which
+express so the grand impunity of their pride, their claims, their
+assurance!"
+
+"We've had great luck," she granted--"as I've just been reminded;
+but ever since those terrible things you told me in town--about the
+tremendous tricks of the whirligig of time and the aesthetic fools'
+paradise in which so many of us live--I've gone about with my heart in
+my mouth. Who knows that while I talk Mr. Bender mayn't be pulling us to
+pieces?"
+
+Hugh Crimble had a shudder of remembrance. "Mr. Bender?"
+
+"The rich American who's going round."
+
+It gave him a sharper shock. "The wretch who bagged Lady Lappington's
+Longhi?"
+
+Lady Grace showed surprise. "Is he a wretch?"
+
+Her visitor but asked to be extravagant. "Rather--the scoundrel. He
+offered his infernal eight thousand down."
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant he had played some trick!"
+
+"I wish he had--he could then have been collared."
+
+"Well," Lady Grace peacefully smiled, "it's no use his offering _us_
+eight thousand--or eighteen or even eighty!"
+
+Hugh Crimble stared as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance,
+almost crude on exquisite lips and contradicting an imputation no one
+would have indecently made. "Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man
+surely doesn't _suppose_ you'd traffic."
+
+She might, while she still smiled at him, have been fairly enjoying the
+friendly horror she produced. "I don't quite know what he supposes. But
+people _have_ trafficked; people do; people are trafficking all round."
+
+"Ah," Hugh Crimble cried, "that's what deprives me of my rest and, as
+a lover of our vast and beneficent art-wealth, poisons my waking hours.
+That art-wealth is at the mercy of a leak there appears no means of
+stopping." She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent
+flood might almost at any moment become copious. "Precious things are
+going out of our distracted country at a quicker rate than the very
+quickest--a century and more ago--of their ever coming in."
+
+She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom
+stirred thought soon found connections and relations. "Well, I suppose
+our art-wealth came in--save for those awkward Elgin Marbles!--mainly
+by purchase too, didn't it? We ourselves largely took it away from
+somewhere, didn't we? We didn't _grow_ it all."
+
+"We grew some of the loveliest flowers--and on the whole to-day the most
+exposed." He had been pulled up but for an instant. "Great Gainsboroughs
+and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and Constables
+and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you'll recognise, a vast garden in
+themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully grown than
+your splendid 'Duchess of Waterbridge'?"
+
+The girl showed herself ready at once to recognise under his eloquence
+anything he would. "Yes--it's our Sir Joshua, I believe, that Mr. Bender
+has proclaimed himself particularly 'after.'"
+
+It brought a cloud to her friend's face. "Then he'll be capable of
+anything."
+
+"Of anything, no doubt, but of making my father capable--! And you
+haven't at any rate," she said, "so much as seen the picture."
+
+"I beg your pardon--I saw it at the Guildhall three years ago; and am
+almost afraid of getting again, with a fresh sense of its beauty, a
+livelier sense of its danger."
+
+Lady Grace, however, was so far from fear that she could even afford
+pity. "Poor baffled Mr. Bender!"
+
+"Oh, rich and confident Mr. Bender!" Crimble cried. "Once given his
+money, his confidence is a horrid engine in itself--there's the rub!
+I dare say"--the young man saw it all--"he has brought his poisonous
+cheque."
+
+She gave it her less exasperated wonder. "One has heard of that, but
+only in the case of some particularly pushing dealer."
+
+"And Mr. Bender, to do him justice, isn't a particularly pushing
+dealer?"
+
+"No," Lady Grace judiciously returned; "I think he's not a dealer at
+all, but just what you a moment ago spoke of yourself as being."
+
+He gave a glance at his possibly wild recent past. "A fond true lover?"
+
+"As we _all_ were in our lucky time--when we rum-aged Italy and Spain."
+
+He appeared to recognise this complication--of Bender's voracious
+integrity; but only to push it away. "Well, I don't know whether the
+best lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers--but I feel to-day that
+they're the best keepers."
+
+The breath of his emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl's
+dimmer fire. "It's as if it were suddenly in the air that you've brought
+us some light or some help--that you may do something really good for
+us."
+
+"Do you mean 'mark down,' as they say at the shops, all your greatest
+claims?"
+
+His chord of sensibility had trembled all gratefully into derision, and
+not to seem to swagger he had put his possible virtue at its lowest.
+This she beautifully showed that she beautifully saw. "I dare say that
+if you did even that we should have to take it from you."
+
+"Then it may very well be," he laughed back, "the reason why I feel,
+under my delightful, wonderful impression, a bit anxious and nervous and
+afraid."
+
+"That shows," she returned, "that you suspect us of horrors hiding from
+justice, and that your natural kindness yet shrinks from handing us
+over!"
+
+Well, clearly, she might put it as she liked--it all came back to his
+being more charmed. "Heaven knows I've wanted a chance at you, but what
+should you say if, having then at last just taken you in in your so
+apparent perfection, I should feel it the better part of valour simply
+to mount my 'bike' again and spin away?"
+
+"I should be sure that at the end of the avenue you'd turn right round
+and come back. You'd think again of Mr. Bender."
+
+"Whom I don't, however, you see--if he's prowling off there--in the
+least want to meet." Crimble made the point with gaiety. "I don't
+know what I mightn't do to him--and yet it's not of my temptation to
+violence, after all, that I'm most afraid. It's of the brutal mistake
+of one's breaking--with one's priggish, precious modernity and
+one's possibly futile discriminations--into a _general_ situation or
+composition, as we say, so serene and sound and right. What should one
+do here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one's breath and
+walk on tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell
+me, instinctively stay outside. I saw that all," the young man went on
+with more weight in his ardour, "I saw it, while we talked in London,
+as your natural setting and your native air--and now ten minutes on the
+spot have made it sink into my spirit. You're a case, all together, of
+enchanted harmony, of perfect equilibrium--there's nothing to be done or
+said."
+
+His friend listened to this eloquence with her eyes lowered, then
+raising them to meet, with a vague insistence, his own; after which
+something she had seen there appeared to determine in her another
+motion. She indicated the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady
+Sandgate's report, rapidly studied and denounced. "For what do you take
+that little picture?"
+
+Hugh Crimble went over and looked. "Why, don't you know? It's a jolly
+little Vandermeer of Delft."
+
+"It's not a base imitation?"
+
+He looked again, but appeared at a loss. "An imitation of Vandermeer?"
+
+"Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp."
+
+It made the young man ring out: "Then Mr. Bender's doubly dangerous!"
+
+"Singly is enough!" Lady Grace laughed. "But you see you _have_ to
+speak."
+
+"Oh, to _him_, rather, after that--if you'll just take me to him."
+
+"Yes then," she said; but even while she spoke Lord John, who had
+returned, by the terrace, from his quarter of an hour passed with Lady
+Imber, was there practically between them; a fact that she had to notice
+for her other visitor, to whom she was hastily reduced to naming him.
+
+His lordship eagerly made the most of this tribute of her attention,
+which had reached his ear; he treated it--her "Oh Lord John!"--as a
+direct greeting. "Ah Lady Grace! I came back particularly to find you."
+
+She could but explain her predicament. "I was taking Mr. Crimble to see
+the pictures." And then more pointedly, as her manner had been virtually
+an introduction of that gentleman, an introduction which Lord John's
+mere noncommittal stare was as little as possible a response to: "Mr.
+Crimble's one of the quite new connoisseurs."
+
+"Oh, I'm at the very lowest round of the ladder. But I aspire!" Hugh
+laughed.
+
+"You'll mount!" said Lady Grace with friendly confidence.
+
+He took it again with gay deprecation. "Ah, if by that time there's
+anything left here to mount _on!_"
+
+"Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won't
+have been able to carry off." To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a
+helpful spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had
+the air of wishing to preserve his detachment: "It's to Lord John that
+we owe Mr. Bender's acquaintance."
+
+Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. "Then do you
+happen to know, sir, what your friend means to _do_ with his spoil?"
+
+The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a
+commercially calculating or interested one. "Oh, not sell it again."
+
+"Then ship it to New York?" the inquirer pursued, defining himself
+somehow as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.
+
+That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed
+relish for being able to displease Lady Grace's odd guest by large
+assent. "As fast as ever he can--and you can land things there _now_,
+can't you? in three or four days."
+
+"I dare say. But can't he be induced to have a little mercy?" Hugh
+sturdily pursued.
+
+Lord John pushed out his lips. "A 'little'? How much do you want?"
+
+"Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand."
+
+"I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender's hand than you can empty
+his purse."
+
+"Ah, the Despoilers!" said Crimble with strong expression. "But it's
+_we_," he added, "who are base."
+
+"'Base'?"--and Lord John's surprise was apparently genuine.
+
+"To want only to 'do business,' I mean, with our treasures, with our
+glories."
+
+Hugh's words exhaled such a sense of peril as to draw at once Lady
+Grace. "Ah, but if we're above that _here_, as you know------!"
+
+He stood smilingly corrected and contrite. "Of course I know--but you
+must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all,
+won't you? the Moretto of Brescia."
+
+"You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?"
+
+"Why, didn't you tell me yourself?" It went on between them for the
+moment quite as if there had been no Lord John.
+
+"Probably, yes," she recalled; "so how I must have swaggered!" After
+which she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of
+urgency. "Will you also come?"
+
+He confessed to a difficulty--which his whole face begged her also to
+take account of. "I hoped you'd be at leisure--for something I've so at
+heart!"
+
+This had its effect; she took a rapid decision and turned persuasively
+to Crimble--for whom, in like manner, there must have been something in
+_her_ face. "Let Mr. Bender himself then show you. And there are things
+in the library too."
+
+"Oh yes, there are things in the library." Lord John, happy in his
+gained advantage and addressing Hugh from the strong ground of an
+initiation already complete, quite sped him on the way.
+
+Hugh clearly made no attempt to veil the penetration with which he was
+moved to look from one of these counsellors to the other, though with a
+ready "Thank-you!" for Lady Grace he the next instant started in pursuit
+of Mr. Bender.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Your friend seems remarkably hot!" Lord John remarked to his young
+hostess as soon as they had been left together.
+
+"He has cycled twenty miles. And indeed," she smiled, "he does appear to
+care for what he cares for!"
+
+Her companion then, during a moment's silence, might have been noting
+the emphasis of her assent. "Have you known him long?"
+
+"No--not long."
+
+"Nor seen him often?"
+
+"Only once--till now."
+
+"Oh!" said Lord John with another pause. But he soon proceeded. "Let us
+leave him then to cool! I haven't cycled twenty miles, but I've motored
+forty very much in the hope of _this_, Lady Grace--the chance of being
+able to assure you that I too care very much for what I care for." To
+which he added on an easier note, as to carry off a slight awkwardness
+while she only waited: "You certainly mustn't let yourself--between us
+all--be worked to death."
+
+"Oh, such days as this--I" She made light enough of her burden.
+
+"They don't come often to _me_ at least, Lady Grace! I hadn't grasped
+in advance the scale of your fete," he went on; "but since I've the
+great luck to find you alone--!" He paused for breath, however, before
+the full sequence.
+
+She helped him out as through common kindness, but it was a trifle
+colourless. "Alone or in company, Lord John, I'm always very glad to see
+you."
+
+"Then that assurance helps me to wonder if you don't perhaps gently
+guess what it is I want to say." This time indeed she left him to
+his wonder, so that he had to support himself. "I've tried, all
+considerately--these three months--to let you see for yourself how
+I feel. I feel very strongly, Lady Grace; so that at last"--and his
+impatient sincerity took after another instant the jump--"well, I
+regularly worship you. You're my absolute ideal. I think of you the
+whole time."
+
+She measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of pretty
+ribbon. "Are you sure you _know_ me enough?"
+
+"I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!" Nothing now at least
+could have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistake
+showed in her smile he followed it up. "Isn't what you rather mean that
+you haven't cared sufficiently to know _me?_ If so, that can be little
+by little mended, Lady Grace." He was in fact altogether gallant about
+it. "I'm aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but I
+defy you to find a limit to my possible devotion."
+
+She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. "I believe you'd be
+very good to me."
+
+"Well, isn't _that_ something to start with?"--he fairly pounced on it.
+"I'll do any blest thing in life you like, I'll accept any condition you
+impose, if you'll only tell me you see your way."
+
+"Shouldn't I have a little more first to see yours?" she asked. "When
+you say you'll do anything in life I like, isn't there anything you
+yourself want strongly enough to do?"
+
+He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. "Anything that
+will make money, you mean?"
+
+"Make money or make reputation--or even just make the time pass."
+
+"Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?" If that was her
+meaning he could show after an instant that he didn't fear it. "Well,
+your father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me to
+understand that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I've
+noticed, as you doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs a
+fellow----!"
+
+He left the obvious moral for her to take up--which she did, but all
+interrogatively. "The fellow at once comes in for something awfully
+good?"
+
+"I don't in the least mind your laughing at me," Lord John returned,
+"for when I put him the question of the lift he'd give me by speaking
+to you first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty in
+which he leaves you, and yet which doesn't come--take my word!" said the
+young man sagely--"from his being at all indifferent."
+
+"No," she answered--"father isn't indifferent. But father's 'great'"
+
+"Great indeed!"--her friend took it as with full comprehension. This
+appeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought.
+"Too great for _you?_"
+
+"Well, he makes me feel--even as his daughter--my extreme comparative
+smallness."
+
+It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant "He's a _grand
+seigneur_, and a serious one--that's what he is: the very type and model
+of it, down to the ground. So you can imagine," the young man said,
+"what he makes me feel--most of all when he's so awfully good-natured
+to me. His being as 'great' as you say and yet backing me--such as I
+am!--doesn't _that_ strike you as a good note for me, the best you could
+possibly require? For he really _would_ like what I propose to you."
+
+She might have been noting, while she thought, that he had risen to
+ingenuity, to fineness, on the wings of his argument; under the effect
+of which her reply had the air of a concession. "Yes--he would like it."
+
+"Then he _has_ spoken to you?" her suitor eagerly asked.
+
+"He hasn't needed--he has ways of letting one know."
+
+"Yes, yes, he has ways; all his own--like everything else he has. He's
+wonderful."
+
+She fully agreed. "He's wonderful."
+
+The tone of it appeared somehow to shorten at once for Lord John the
+rest of his approach to a conclusion. "So you do see your way?"
+
+"Ah--!" she said with a quick sad shrinkage.
+
+"I mean," her visitor hastened to explain, "if he does put it to you as
+the very best idea he has for you. When he does that--as I believe him
+ready to do--will you really and fairly listen to him? I'm certain,
+honestly, that when you know me better--!" His confidence in short
+donned a bravery.
+
+"I've been feeling this quarter of an hour," the girl returned, "that I
+do know you better."
+
+"Then isn't that all I want?--unless indeed I ought perhaps to ask
+rather if it isn't all _you_ do! At any rate," said Lord John, "I may
+see you again here?"
+
+She waited a moment. "You must have patience with me."
+
+"I _am_ having it But _after_ your father's appeal."
+
+"Well," she said, "that must come first."
+
+"Then you won't dodge it?"
+
+She looked at him straight "I don't dodge, Lord John."
+
+He admired the manner of it "You look awfully handsome as you say
+so--and you see what _that_ does to me." As to attentuate a little the
+freedom of which he went on: "May I fondly hope that if Lady Imber too
+should wish to put in another word for me----?"
+
+"Will I listen to her?"--it brought Lady Grace straight down. "No, Lord
+John, let me tell you at once that I'll do nothing of the sort Kitty's
+quite another affair, and I never listen to her a bit more than I can
+help."
+
+Lord John appeared to feel, on this, that he mustn't too easily, in
+honour, abandon a person who had presented herself to him as an ally.
+"Ah, you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself--in his
+looser moments!--takes pleasure in what she says."
+
+Our young woman's eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, had
+no mercy for its extreme feebleness. "If you mean that she's the most
+reckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as when
+she's at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out her
+interest, she has learnt to 'get round' him till he only sees through
+her eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you
+think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it's not on
+the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his
+youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_."
+
+Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering
+object in his face; but then recovering himself: "He hasn't perhaps an
+absolutely boundless confidence--"
+
+"In any one in the world but himself?"--she had taken him straight up.
+"He hasn't indeed, and that's what we must come to; so that even if he
+likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won't be because
+you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!"
+
+"You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he
+isn't?"
+
+Lady Grace was indeed sure. "Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so
+with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything."
+
+Lord John appeared struck. "Yes--and he still allows her two thousand."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!" the girl
+undisguisedly smiled.
+
+"Then perhaps I oughtn't!"--he glowed with the light of contrition.
+
+"Well, you can't help it now," his companion remarked with amusement.
+
+"You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?" Lord John inquired.
+"I'm sure you're right, and that he will," he continued quite as in good
+faith; "but I want you to understand that I don't care in the least what
+it may be!"
+
+The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet.
+"You're very good to say so!"
+
+If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that
+they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of
+a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to
+them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another
+question. "Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he
+thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?"
+
+Lady Grace's answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the
+person by whom they were now joined. "Lord John desires you should tell
+me, father, how good you think him."
+
+"'Good,' my dear?--good for what?" said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly,
+but looking from one of them to the other.
+
+"I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you."
+
+"Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go
+back and deal with those overwhelming children."
+
+"Ah, they don't overwhelm _you_, father!"--the girl put it with some
+point.
+
+"If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did," he
+replied--"from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred
+painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only
+for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the
+large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his
+back. The bucket, under the stream--"
+
+"Was bound to overflow?" Lady Grace suggested.
+
+"Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not
+unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really," Lord
+Theign insisted, "go and deal with it."
+
+His daughter's smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. "You work
+people up, father, and then leave others to let them down."
+
+"The two things," he promptly replied, "require different natures." To
+which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of
+harshness, "Go!"
+
+It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with
+a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and
+resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared.
+
+"The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!" Lord
+John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just
+slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two
+were left together.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the
+impression his daughter appeared to have given him. "She didn't want
+to go?" And then before Lord John could reply: "What the deuce is the
+matter with her?"
+
+Lord John took his time. "I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble."
+
+"And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?"
+
+"A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have
+invited."
+
+"Where is he then?" Lord Theign demanded.
+
+"Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for."
+
+"Oh!"--it made his lordship easier. "Then he's all right--on such a
+day."
+
+His companion could none the less just wonder. "Hadn't Lady Grace told
+you?"
+
+"That he was coming? Not that I remember." But Lord Theign, perceptibly
+preoccupied, made nothing of this. "We've had other fish to fry, and you
+know the freedom I allow her."
+
+His friend had a vivid gesture. "My dear man, I only ask to profit by
+it!" With which there might well have been in Lord John's face a light
+of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.
+
+Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself
+far from all bourgeois narrowness. "She has her friends by the score--at
+this time of day." There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the
+time of day. "But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your
+own--of whom I've but just heard?"
+
+"Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they'll have met and taken
+care of each other." Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the
+least of Lord John's difficulties. "I mustn't appear to Bender to have
+failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that,
+seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very
+pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn't been perhaps," he continued,
+"quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if
+I'm not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without
+abhorrence. Only I've led her to expect--for our case--that you'll be
+so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her
+yourself."
+
+"Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter's time?" Lord Theign,
+confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet
+with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was
+never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in
+from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown;
+but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed,
+of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required.
+His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all
+respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless,
+almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed
+things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and
+his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this
+rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of
+relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of
+displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with
+himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,
+"sink" a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the
+formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in
+him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small
+wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance
+of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages,
+flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective,
+a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that
+might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion,
+you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any
+opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was
+that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if
+it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of
+fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline,
+of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of
+an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought
+line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might
+somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal
+privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his
+suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding
+paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the
+scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the
+thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought
+of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives.
+Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last
+immediate question on his hands.
+
+"Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety," his companion has
+meanwhile replied to it. "But I was thinking a little, you understand,
+of the importance of our own time."
+
+Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for
+the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for
+interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to
+strain to "understand" in this particular connection--it would be his
+familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the
+work for him. "'Our own' in the sense of yours and mine?"
+
+"Of yours and mine and Lady Imber's, yes--and a good bit, last not
+least, in that of my watching and waiting mother's." This struck no
+prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went
+on: "The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine
+old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on
+the whole question, she _is_, don't you know? What she put to me"--the
+younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--"what she
+put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight
+in the face, you see, was: Do we or don't we, decidedly, take up
+practically her very handsome offer--'very handsome' being, I mean,
+what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather
+decent."
+
+Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. "Kitty has of course
+rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again
+on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the
+ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say," and he took
+himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, "discharges
+her obligations--by her sister's fair hand; not to mention a few other
+trifles for which I naturally provide."
+
+Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet
+but briefly at a loss. "Of course we take into account, don't we? not
+only the fact of my mother's desire (intended, I assure you, to be most
+flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but
+her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over
+and above----"
+
+"Over and above Kitty's release from her damnable payment?"--Lord Theign
+reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. "Of course
+we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn't, my dear fellow, be
+discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so
+little appeal to me: especially as there's nothing, you easily conceive,
+that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family,
+or any other (as a family) that she wouldn't be quite as sure of by just
+staying in her own. The Duchess's idea, at any rate, if I've followed
+you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve
+thousand; with the condition--"
+
+Lord John was already all there. "Definitely, yes, of your settling the
+equivalent on Lady Grace."
+
+"And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?"
+
+"Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace
+herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve."
+
+"And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient
+time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?"
+
+Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his
+friend's general resources, to consider that question seriously. "Surely
+you can have no difficulty whatever--!"
+
+"Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I've had this year to
+let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have
+_liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a
+matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty's horrid incubus?"
+
+"Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_," Lord John brightly
+indicated, "are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will
+only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must
+feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady
+Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she
+has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion."
+
+"She has expressed a very high opinion of you?"--Lord Theign scarce
+glowed with credulity.
+
+But the younger man held his ground. "She has told me she thoroughly
+likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such
+things--she thinks me perfectly charming."
+
+"A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then," said Lord Theign, "what
+does she want more?"
+
+"She very possibly wants nothing--but I'm to that beastly degree,
+you see," his visitor patiently explained, "in the cleft stick of my
+fearfully positive mother's wants. Those are her 'terms,' and I don't
+mind saying that they're most disagreeable to me--I quite hate 'em:
+there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn't
+touch 'em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady
+Grace--wasn't so immensely enlisted."
+
+"I assure you I'd chuck 'em out of window, my boy, if I didn't believe
+you'd be really good to her," Lord Theign returned with the properest
+spirit.
+
+It only encouraged his companion. "You _will_ just tell her then, now
+and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?"
+
+This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. "You truly hold
+that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your
+job?"
+
+"That's the conviction I entertain."
+
+Lord Theign thought again. "Well, even if your conviction's just, that
+still doesn't tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of
+the least use for me to fumble."
+
+"Oh," Lord John laughed, "when a man has such a tremendous assortment
+of breeches--!" He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught
+the great vista of the open rooms. "If it's a question of pockets--and
+what's _in_ 'em--here precisely is my man!" This personage had come back
+from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall,
+exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John's welcome was warm. "I've
+had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining
+you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this
+assistance. "Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home,
+Lord Theign." To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood
+good-humouredly passive to his approach: "I've been round, by your kind
+permission and the light of nature, and haven't required support; though
+if I had there's a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any
+amount." Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive
+hand this contributory figure. "A young, spare, nervous gentleman with
+eye-glasses--I guess he's an author. A friend of yours too?" he asked of
+Lord John.
+
+The answer was prompt and emphatic. "No, the gentleman is no friend at
+all of mine, Mr. Bender."
+
+"A friend of my daughter's," Lord Theign easily explained. "I hope
+they're looking after him."
+
+"Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and
+were so good as to move something," Mr. Bender conscientiously added,
+"so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto."
+
+This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John
+unfavourably. "Up on a chair? I say!"
+
+Mr. Bender took another view. "Why, I got right up myself--a little more
+and I'd almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested"--the
+proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--"in that Moretto."
+And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. "I take
+it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir
+Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it
+didn't lead to our moving any more furniture." On which he paused as to
+enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host's reassurance. "It _has_
+yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you
+prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?"
+
+Lord Theign met Mr. Bender's eyes while this inquirer left these few
+portentous words to speak for themselves. "To the effect that I part to
+you with 'The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge'? No, Mr. Bender, such a
+proposition would leave me intensely cold."
+
+Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. "My dear Bender, I
+_envy_ you!"
+
+"I guess you don't envy me," his friend serenely replied, "as much as I
+envy Lord Theign." And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to
+face each other searchingly and firmly: "What I allude to is an overture
+of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light
+on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I've had some
+experience of first shocks, and I'd be glad to meet you as man to man."
+
+Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended
+no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less
+evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. "As rich man to
+poor man is how I'm to understand it? For me to meet _you_," he added,
+"I should have to be tempted--and I'm not even temptable. So there we
+are," he blandly smiled.
+
+His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John.
+"'The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,' Mr. Bender, is a golden apple
+of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don't lop
+off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age,
+they so much enjoy."
+
+Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. "Then
+if they don't sell their ancestors where in the world are all the
+ancestors bought?"
+
+"Doesn't it for the moment sufficiently answer your question," Lord
+Theign asked, "that they're definitely not bought at Dedborough?"
+
+"Why," said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, "you talk as if it were
+my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand.
+I'd be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn't make you
+kick." And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith.
+"Well, I guess I can wait!"
+
+This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from
+which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and
+more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. "Mr. Bender's
+bound to _have_ something!"
+
+It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his
+friend's mute pressure. "'Something'?"
+
+"Something, Mr. Bender?" Lord John insisted.
+
+It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. "Why, have _you_ an
+interest, Lord John?"
+
+This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
+referred it to Lord Theign. "Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as
+if I have an interest?"
+
+Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and
+then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. "My dear fellow,
+you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!"
+
+"Oh, I don't mean at your expense," Lord John laughed--"I mean at Mr.
+Bender's!"
+
+"Well, go ahead, Lord John," said that gentleman, always easy, but
+always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything--"go ahead, but
+don't sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn't already exist
+in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact
+been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I've got some
+peculiarity, for it doesn't seem as if the thing could be done. If the
+germ is there, on the other hand," Mr. Bender conceded, "it develops
+independently of all encouragement."
+
+Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
+"He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!"
+
+Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
+the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
+toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way
+to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after
+doing so that he made the remark: "Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much
+for you!"
+
+"That makes me the more sorry, sir," said his visitor, "not to have been
+enough for _you!_"
+
+"I risk it, at any rate," Lord John went on--"I put you, Bender, the
+question of whether you wouldn't Move,' as you say, to acquire that
+Moretto."
+
+Mr. Bender's large face had a commensurate gaze. "As I say? I haven't
+said anything of the sort!"
+
+"But you do 'love' you know," Lord John slightly overgrimaced.
+
+"I don't when I don't want to. I'm different from most people--I can
+love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto," Mr. Bender
+continued, "is that it ain't what I'm after."
+
+His "after" had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack
+on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
+John's speaking again across to their host. "The worst he can do for me,
+you see, is to refuse it."
+
+Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling
+about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had
+but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: "It's the very first time
+in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or
+anything else in it, has been offered----!"
+
+It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn't dropped Mr. Bender
+mightn't have been markedly impressed. "Then it must be the very first
+time such an offer has failed."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that we in the least press it!" Lord Theign quite
+naturally laughed.
+
+"Ah, I beg your pardon--I press it very hard!" And Lord John, as taking
+from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far
+as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion's native
+form. "You don't mean to say you don't feel the interest of that
+Moretto?"
+
+Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. "Well, if you had
+seen me up on that chair you'd have thought I did."
+
+"Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed."
+
+"I stepped down quite impressed with that young man."
+
+"Mr. Crimble?"--it came after an instant to Lord John. "With _his_
+opinion, really? Then I hope he's aware of the picture's value."
+
+"You had better ask him," Mr. Bender observed.
+
+"Oh, we don't depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!" Lord John returned.
+
+Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. "Are you aware of the value
+yourself?"
+
+His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their
+entertainer. "Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?"
+
+Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared,
+a bit extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of
+hovering aloof.
+
+"That question needn't trouble us--when I see how much Mr. Bender
+himself knows about it."
+
+"Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at." And
+then as the others waited, "Ten thousand," said Mr. Bender.
+
+"Ten thousand?" The owner of the work showed no emotion.
+
+"Well," said Lord John again in Mr. Bender's style, "what's the matter
+with ten thousand?"
+
+The subject of his gay tribute considered. "There's nothing the matter
+with ten thousand."
+
+"Then," Lord Theign asked, "is there anything the matter with the
+picture?"
+
+"Yes, sir--I guess there is."
+
+It gave an upward push to his lordship's eyebrows. "But what in the
+world----?"
+
+"Well, that's just the question!"
+
+The eyebrows continued to rise. "Does he pretend there's a question of
+whether it _is_ a Moretto?"
+
+"That's what he was up there trying to find out."
+
+"But if the value's, according to himself, ten thousand----?"
+
+"Why, of course," said Mr. Bender, "it's a fine work anyway."
+
+"Then," Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, "what's the matter with
+_you_, Mr. Bender?"
+
+That gentleman was perfectly clear. "The matter with me, Lord Theign, is
+that I've no use for a ten thousand picture."
+
+"'No use?'"--the expression had an oddity. "But what's it your idea to
+do with such things?"
+
+"I mean," Mr. Bender explained, "that a picture of that rank is not what
+I'm after."
+
+"The figure," said his noble host--speaking thus, under pressure,
+commercially--"is beyond what you see your way to?"
+
+But Lord John had jumped at the truth. "The matter with Mr. Bender is
+that he sees his way much further."
+
+"Further?" their companion echoed.
+
+"The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions."
+
+Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. "Well, there would be no
+difficulty about _that_, I think!"
+
+"Ah," said his guest, "you know the basis, sir, on which I'm ready to
+pay."
+
+"On the basis then of the Sir Joshua," Lord John inquired, "how far
+would you go?"
+
+Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety
+by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. "Well, I'd
+go all the way."
+
+"He wants, you see," Lord John elucidated, "an _ideally_ expensive
+thing."
+
+Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant
+spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. "Then why
+shouldn't I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?"
+
+"Because you can't do violence to _that_ master's natural modesty," Mr.
+Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at
+this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once
+supplied a further light. "I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell
+you."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Hugh Crimble had come back from his voyage of discovery, and it was
+visible as he stood there flushed and quite radiant that he had caught
+in his approach Lord Theign's last inquiry and Mr. Bender's reply to it.
+You would have imputed to him on the spot the lively possession of a new
+idea, the sustaining sense of a message important enough to justify his
+irruption. He looked from one to the other of the three men, scattered
+a little by the sight of him, but attached eyes of recognition then
+to Lord Theign's, whom he remained an instant longer communicatively
+smiling at. After which, as you might have gathered, he all confidently
+plunged, taking up the talk where the others had left it. "I should say,
+Lord Theign, if you'll allow me, in regard to what you appear to have
+been discussing, that it depends a good deal on just that question--of
+what your Moretto, at any rate, may be presumed or proved to 'be.' Let
+me thank you," he cheerfully went on, "for your kind leave to go over
+your treasures."
+
+The personage he so addressed was, as we know, nothing if not generally
+affable; yet if that was just then apparent it was through a shade of
+coolness for the slightly heated familiarity of so plain, or at least
+so free, a young man in eye-glasses, now for the first time definitely
+apprehended. "Oh, I've scarcely 'treasures'--but I've some things of
+interest."
+
+Hugh, however, entering the opulent circle, as it were, clearly took
+account of no breath of a chill. "I think possible, my lord, that
+you've a great treasure--if you've really so high a rarity as a splendid
+Manto-vano."
+
+"A 'Mantovano'?" You wouldn't have been sure that his lordship didn't
+pronounce the word for the first time in his life.
+
+"There have been supposed to be only _seven_ real examples about the
+world; so that if by an extraordinary chance you find yourself the
+possessor of a magnificent eighth----"
+
+But Lord John had already broken in. "Why, there you _are_, Mr. Bender!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bender, with whom I've made acquaintance," Hugh returned, "was
+there as it began to work in me--"
+
+"That your Moretto, Lord Theign"--Mr. Bender took their informant
+up--"isn't, after all, a Moretto at all." And he continued amusedly to
+Hugh: "It began to work in you, sir, like very strong drink!"
+
+"Do I understand you to suggest," Lord Theign asked of the startling
+young man, "that my precious picture isn't genuine?"
+
+Well, Hugh knew exactly what he suggested. "As a picture, Lord Theign,
+as a great portrait, one of the most genuine things in Europe. But it
+strikes me as probable that from far back--for reasons!--there has
+been a wrong attribution; that the work has been, in other words,
+traditionally, obstinately miscalled. It has passed for a Moretto, and
+at first I quite took it for one; but I suddenly, as I looked and looked
+and saw and saw, began to doubt, and now I know _why_ I doubted."
+
+Lord Theign had during this speech kept his eyes on the ground; but he
+raised them to Mr. Crimble's almost palpitating presence for the remark:
+"I'm bound to say that I hope you've some very good grounds!"
+
+"I've three or four, Lord Theign; they seem to me of the best--as yet.
+They made me wonder and wonder--and then light splendidly broke."
+
+His lordship didn't stint his attention. "Reflected, you mean, from
+_other_ Mantovanos--that I don't know?"
+
+"I mean from those I know myself," said Hugh; "and I mean from fine
+analogies with one in particular."
+
+"Analogies that in all these years, these centuries, have so remarkably
+not been noticed?"
+
+"Well," Hugh competently explained, "they're a sort of thing the very
+sense of, the value and meaning of, are a highly modern--in fact a quite
+recent growth."
+
+Lord John at this professed with cordiality that he at least quite
+understood. "Oh, we know a lot more about our pictures and things than
+ever our ancestors did!"
+
+"Well, I guess it's enough for _me_," Mr. Bender contributed, "that your
+ancestors knew enough to get 'em!"
+
+"Ah, that doesn't go so far," cried Hugh, "unless we ourselves know
+enough to keep 'em!"
+
+The words appeared to quicken in a manner Lord Theign's view of the
+speaker. "Were _your_ ancestors, Mr. Crimble, great collectors?"
+
+Arrested, it might be, in his general assurance, Hugh wondered and
+smiled. "Mine--collectors? Oh, I'm afraid I haven't any--to speak of.
+Only it has seemed to me for a long time," he added, "that on that head
+we should all feel together."
+
+Lord Theign looked for a moment as if these were rather large
+presumptions; then he put them in their place a little curtly. "It's one
+thing to keep our possessions for ourselves--it's another to keep them
+for other people."
+
+"Well," Hugh good-humouredly returned, "I'm perhaps not so absolutely
+sure of myself, if you press me, as that I sha'n't be glad of a higher
+and wiser opinion--I mean than my own. It would be awfully interesting,
+if you'll allow me to say so, to have the judgment of one or two of the
+great men."
+
+"You're not yourself, Mr. Crimble, one of the great men?" his host asked
+with tempered irony.
+
+"Well, I guess he's going to be, anyhow," Mr. Bender cordially struck
+in; "and this remarkable exhibition of intelligence may just let him
+loose on the world, mayn't it?"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Bender!"--and Hugh obviously tried to look neither
+elated nor snubbed. "I've too much still to learn, but I'm learning
+every day, and I shall have learnt immensely this afternoon."
+
+"Pretty well at my expense, however," Lord Theign laughed, "if you
+demolish a name we've held for generations so dear."
+
+"You may have held the name dear, my lord," his young critic answered;
+"but my whole point is that, if I'm right, you've held the picture
+itself cheap."
+
+"Because a Mantovano," said Lord John, "is so much greater a value?"
+
+Hugh met his eyes a moment "Are you talking of values pecuniary?"
+
+"What values are _not_ pecuniary?"
+
+Hugh might, during his hesitation, have been imagined to stand off a
+little from the question. "Well, some things have in a higher degree
+that one, and some have the associational or the factitious, and some
+the clear artistic."
+
+"And some," Mr. Bender opined, "have them _all_--in the highest degree.
+But what you mean," he went on, "is that a Mantovano would come higher
+under the hammer than a Moretto?"
+
+"Why, sir," the young man returned, "there aren't any, as I've just
+stated, _to_ 'come.' I account--or I easily can--for every one of the
+very small number."
+
+"Then do you consider that you account for this one?"
+
+"I believe I shall if you'll give me time."
+
+"Oh, time!" Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. "But we'll give you all we've
+got--only I guess it isn't much." And he appeared freely to invite their
+companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however, they
+watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had
+gone on: "How much higher--if your idea is correct about it--would Lord
+Theign's picture come?"
+
+Hugh turned to that nobleman. "Does Mr. Bender mean come to _him_, my
+lord?"
+
+Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done
+yet at his other invader. "I don't know _what_ Mr. Bender means!" With
+which he turned off.
+
+"Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one!
+But how _much_ higher?" the American continued to Hugh.
+
+"How much higher to _you?_"
+
+"Oh, I can size _that_. How much higher as a Mantovano?"
+
+Unmistakably--for us at least--our young man was gaining time; he had
+the instinct of circumspection and delay. "To any one?"
+
+"To any one."
+
+"Than as a Moretto?" Hugh continued.
+
+It even acted on Lord John's nerves. "That's what we're talking
+about--really!"
+
+But Hugh still took his ease; as if, with his eyes first on Bender
+and then on Lord Theign, whose back was practically presented, he were
+covertly studying signs. "Well," he presently said, "in view of the very
+great interest combined with the very great rarity, more than--ah more
+than can be estimated off-hand."
+
+It made Lord Theign turn round. "But a fine Moretto has a very great
+rarity and a very great interest."
+
+"Yes--but not on the whole the same amount of either."
+
+"No, not on the whole the same amount of either!"--Mr. Bender
+judiciously echoed it. "But how," he freely pursued, "are you going to
+find out?"
+
+"Have I your permission, Lord Theign," Hugh brightly asked, "to attempt
+to find out?"
+
+The question produced on his lordship's part a visible, a natural
+anxiety. "What would it be your idea then to _do_ with my property?"
+
+"Nothing at all here--it could all be done, I think, at Verona. What
+besets, what quite haunts me," Hugh explained, "is the vivid image of a
+Mantovano--one of the glories of the short list--in a private collection
+in that place. The conviction grows in me that the two portraits must
+be of the same original. In fact I'll bet my head," the young man quite
+ardently wound up, "that the wonderful subject of the Verona picture, a
+very great person clearly, is none other than the very great person of
+yours."
+
+Lord Theign had listened with interest. "Mayn't he be that and yet from
+another hand?"
+
+"It isn't another hand"--oh Hugh was quite positive. "It's the hand of
+the very same painter."
+
+"How can you prove it's the same?"
+
+"Only by the most intimate internal evidence, I admit--and evidence that
+of course has to be estimated."
+
+"Then who," Lord Theign asked, "is to estimate it?"
+
+"Well,"--Hugh was all ready--"will you let Pap-pendick, one of the first
+authorities in Europe, a good friend of mine, in fact more or less my
+master, and who is generally to be found at Brussels? I happen to know
+he knows your picture--he once spoke to me of it; and he'll go and look
+again at the Verona one, he'll go and judge our issue, if I apply to
+him, in the light of certain new tips that I shall be able to give him."
+
+Lord Theign appeared to wonder. "If you 'apply' to him?"
+
+"Like a shot, I believe, if I ask it of him--as a service."
+
+"A service to _you?_ He'll be very obliging," his lordship smiled.
+
+"Well, I've obliged _him!_" Hugh readily retorted.
+
+"The obligation will be to we"--Lord Theign spoke more formally.
+
+"Well, the satisfaction," said Hugh, "will be to all of us. The things
+Pappendick has seen he intensely, ineffaceably keeps in mind, to every
+detail; so that he'll tell me--as no one else really can--if the Verona
+man is _your_ man."
+
+"But then," asked Mr. Bender, "we've got to believe anyway what he
+says?"
+
+"The market," said Lord John with emphasis, "would have to believe
+it--that's the point."
+
+"Oh," Hugh returned lightly, "the market will have nothing to do with
+it, I hope; but I think you'll feel when he has spoken that you really
+know where you are."
+
+Mr. Bender couldn't doubt of that. "Oh, if he gives us a bigger thing we
+won't complain. Only, how long will it take him to get there? I want him
+to start right away."
+
+"Well, as I'm sure he'll be deeply interested----"
+
+"We _may_"--Mr. Bender took it straight up--"get news next week?"
+
+Hugh addressed his reply to Lord Theign; it was already a little too
+much as if he and the American between them were snatching the case from
+that possessor's hands. "The day I hear from Pappendick you shall have a
+full report. And," he conscientiously added, "if I'm proved to have been
+unfortunately wrong----!"
+
+His lordship easily pointed the moral. "You'll have caused me some
+inconvenience."
+
+"Of course I shall," the young man unreservedly agreed--"like a wanton
+meddling ass!" His candour, his freedom had decidedly a note of their
+own. "But my conviction, after those moments with your picture, was too
+strong for me not to speak--and, since you allow it, I face the danger
+and risk the test."
+
+"I allow it of course in the form of business." This produced in Hugh a
+certain blankness. "'Business'?" "If I consent to the inquiry I pay for
+the inquiry." Hugh demurred. "Even if I turn out mistaken?" "You make me
+in any event your proper charge." The young man thought again, and then
+as for vague accommodation: "Oh, my charge won't be high!"
+
+"Ah," Mr. Bender protested, "it ought to be handsome if the thing's
+marked _up_!" After which he looked at his watch. "But I guess I've got
+to go, Lord Theign, though your lovely old Duchess--for it's to _her_
+I've lost my heart--does cry out for me again."
+
+"You'll find her then still there," Lord John observed with emphasis,
+but with his eyes for the time on Lord Theign; "and if you want another
+look at her I'll presently come and take one too."
+
+"I'll order your car to the garden-front," Lord Theign added to this;
+"you'll reach it from the saloon, but I'll see you again first."
+
+Mr. Bender glared as with the round full force of his pair of motor
+lamps. "Well, if you're ready to talk about anything, I am. Good-bye,
+Mr. Crimble."
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Bender." But Hugh, addressing their host while his
+fellow-guest returned to the saloon, broke into the familiarity of
+confidence. "As if you _could_ be ready to 'talk'!"
+
+This produced on the part of the others present a mute exchange that
+could only have denoted surprise at all the irrepressible young outsider
+thus projected upon them took for granted. "I've an idea," said Lord
+John to his friend, "that you're quite ready to talk with _me_."
+
+Hugh then, with his appetite so richly quickened, could but rejoice.
+"Lady Grace spoke to me of things in the library."
+
+"You'll find it _that_ way"--Lord Theign gave the indication.
+
+"Thanks," said Hugh elatedly, and hastened away.
+
+Lord John, when he had gone, found relief in a quick comment. "Very
+sharp, no doubt--but he wants taking down."
+
+The master of Dedborough wouldn't have put it so crudely, but the young
+expert did bring certain things home. "The people my daughters, in the
+exercise of a wild freedom, do pick up----!"
+
+"Well, don't you see that all you've got to do--on the question we're
+dealing with--is to claim your very own wild freedom? Surely I'm right
+in feeling you," Lord John further remarked, "to have jumped at once
+to my idea that Bender is heaven-sent--and at what they call the
+psychologic moment, don't they?--to point that moral. Why look anywhere
+else for a sum of money that--smaller or greater--you can find with
+perfect ease in that extraordinarily bulging pocket?"
+
+Lord Theign, slowly pacing the hall again, threw up his hands. "Ah, with
+'perfect ease' can scarcely be said!"
+
+"Why not?--when he absolutely thrusts his dirty dollars down your
+throat."
+
+"Oh, I'm not talking of ease to _him_," Lord Theign returned--"I'm
+talking of ease to myself. I shall have to make a sacrifice."
+
+"Why not then--for so great a convenience--gallantly make it?"
+
+"Ah, my dear chap, if you want me to sell my Sir Joshua----!"
+
+But the horror in the words said enough, and Lord John felt its chill.
+"I don't make a point of that--God forbid! But there are other things to
+which the objection wouldn't apply."
+
+"You see how it applies--in the case of the Moret-to--for _him_. A mere
+Moretto," said Lord Theign, "is too cheap--for a Yankee 'on the spend.'"
+
+"Then the Mantovano wouldn't be."
+
+"It remains to be proved that it _is_ a Mantovano."
+
+"Well," said Lord John, "go into it."
+
+"Hanged if I won't!" his friend broke out after a moment. "It _would_
+suit me. I mean"--the explanation came after a brief intensity of
+thought--"the possible size of his cheque would."
+
+"Oh," said Lord John gaily, "I guess there's no limit to the possible
+size of his cheque!"
+
+"Yes, it would suit me, it would suit me!" the elder man, standing
+there, audibly mused. But his air changed and a lighter question came
+up to him as he saw his daughter reappear at the door from the terrace.
+"Well, the infant horde?" he immediately put to her.
+
+Lady Grace came in, dutifully accounting for them. "They've marched
+off--in a huge procession."
+
+"Thank goodness! And our friends?"
+
+"All playing tennis," she said--"save those who are sitting it out." To
+which she added, as to explain her return: "Mr. Crimble has gone?"
+
+Lord John took upon him to say. "He's in the library, to which you
+addressed him--making discoveries."
+
+"Not then, I hope," she smiled, "to our disadvantage!"
+
+"To your very great honour and glory." Lord John clearly valued the
+effect he might produce.
+
+"Your Moretto of Brescia--do you know what it really and spendidly
+is?" And then as the girl, in her surprise, but wondered: "A Mantovano,
+neither more nor less. Ever so much more swagger."
+
+"A Mantovano?" Lady Grace echoed. "Why, how tremendously jolly!"
+
+Her father was struck. "Do you know the artist--of whom I had never
+heard?"
+
+"Yes, something of the little that _is_ known." And she rejoiced as her
+knowledge came to her. "He's a tremendous swell, because, great as he
+was, there are but seven proved examples----"
+
+"With this of yours," Lord John broke in, "there are eight."
+
+"Then why haven't I known about him?" Lord Theign put it as if so many
+other people were guilty for this.
+
+His daughter was the first to plead for the vague body. "Why, I suppose
+in order that you should have exactly this pleasure, father."
+
+"Oh, pleasures not desired are like acquaintances not sought--they
+rather bore one!" Lord Theign sighed. With which he moved away from her.
+
+Her eyes followed him an instant--then she smiled at their guest. "Is he
+bored at having the higher prize--if you're sure it _is_ the higher?"
+
+"Mr. Crimble is sure--because if he isn't," Lord John added, "he's a
+wretch."
+
+"Well," she returned, "as he's certainly not a wretch it must be true.
+And fancy," she exclaimed further, though as more particularly for
+herself, "our having suddenly incurred this immense debt to him!"
+
+"Oh, I shall pay Mr. Crimble!" said her father, who had turned round.
+
+The whole question appeared to have provoked in Lord John a rise of
+spirits and a flush of humour. "Don't you let him stick it on."
+
+His host, however, bethinking himself, checked him. "Go _you_ to Mr.
+Bender straight!"
+
+Lord John saw the point. "Yes--till he leaves. But I shall find you
+here, shan't I?" he asked with all earnestness of Lady Grace.
+
+She had an hesitation, but after a look at her father she assented.
+"I'll wait for you."
+
+"Then _a tantot!_" It made him show for happy as, waving his hand at
+her, he proceeded to seek Mr. Bender in presence of the object that most
+excited that gentleman's appetite--to say nothing of the effect involved
+on Lord John's own.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved--it might have been
+nervously--about the place a little, but soon broke ground. "He'll have
+told you, I understand, that I've promised to speak to you for him. But
+I understand also that he has found something to say for himself."
+
+"Yes, we talked--a while since," the girl said. "At least _he_ did."
+
+"Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace."
+
+"Oh, he speaks very well--and I've never disliked him."
+
+It pulled her father up. "Is that _all_--when I think so much of him?"
+
+She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone
+far; but she waited a little. "Do you think very, _very_ much?"
+
+"Surely I've made my good opinion clear to you!"
+
+Again she had a pause. "Oh yes, I've seen you like him and believe in
+him--and I've found him pleasant and clever."
+
+"He has never had," Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained,
+"what I call a real show." But the character under discussion could
+after all be summed up without searching analysis. "I consider
+nevertheless that there's plenty in him."
+
+It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. "He strikes
+me as naturally quick and--well, nice. But I agree with you than he
+hasn't had a chance."
+
+"Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to
+one I dare say you'll find your reward."
+
+For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her
+companion's manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped.
+Didn't he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn't
+his visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and
+indeed rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? "Do you
+desire it very particularly?" was, however, all she at last brought out.
+
+"I should like it exceedingly--if you act from conviction. Then of
+course only; but of one thing I'm myself convinced--of what he thinks of
+yourself and feels for you."
+
+"Then would you mind my waiting a little?" she asked. "I mean to be
+absolutely sure of myself." After which, on his delaying to agree, she
+added frankly, as to help her case: "Upon my word, father, I should like
+to do what would please you."
+
+But it determined in him a sharper impatience. "Ah, what would please
+_me!_ Don't put it off on 'me'! Judge absolutely for yourself"--he
+slightly took himself up--"in the light of my having consented to do for
+him what I always _hate_ to do: deviate from my normal practice of never
+intermeddling. If I've deviated now you can judge. But to do so all
+round, of course, take--in reason!--your time."
+
+"May I ask then," she said, "for still a little more?"
+
+He looked for this, verily, as if it was not in reason. "You know," he
+then returned, "what he'll feel that a sign of."
+
+"Well, I'll tell him what I mean."
+
+"Then I'll send him to you."
+
+He glanced at his watch and was going, but after a "Thanks, father," she
+had stopped him. "There's one thing more." An embarrassment showed in
+her manner, but at the cost of some effect of earnest abruptness she
+surmounted it. "What does your American--Mr. Bender--want?"
+
+Lord Theign plainly felt the challenge. "'My' American? He's none of
+mine!"
+
+"Well then Lord John's."
+
+"He's none of his either--more, I mean, than any one else's. He's every
+one's American, literally--to all appearance; and I've not to tell
+_you_, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people stalk
+in and out here."
+
+"No, father--certainly," she said. "You're splendidly generous."
+
+His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on
+that; but he added as if it were enough: "What the man must by this time
+want more than anything else is his car."
+
+"Not then anything of ours?" she still insisted.
+
+"Of 'ours'?" he echoed with a frown. "Are you afraid he has an eye to
+something of _yours?_"
+
+"Why, if we've a new treasure--which we certainly have if we possess
+a Mantovano--haven't we all, even I, an immense interest in it?" And
+before he could answer, "Is _that_ exposed?" she asked.
+
+Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any
+illusion to the "exposure" of the objects they so solidly sheltered was
+obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a
+stroke both his own reassurance and his daughter's. "How can there be a
+question of it when he only wants Sir Joshuas?"
+
+"He wants ours?" the girl gasped.
+
+"At absolutely any price."
+
+"But you're not," she cried, "discussing it?"
+
+He hesitated as between chiding and contenting her--then he handsomely
+chose. "My dear child, for what do you take me?" With which he
+impatiently started, through the long and stately perspective, for the
+saloon.
+
+She sank into a chair when he had gone; she sat there some moments in a
+visible tension of thought, her hands clasped in her lap and her dropped
+eyes fixed and unperceiving; but she sprang up as Hugh Crimble, in
+search of her, again stood before her. He presented himself as with
+winged sandals.
+
+"What luck to find you! I must take my spin back."
+
+"You've seen everything as you wished?"
+
+"Oh," he smiled, "I've seen wonders."
+
+She showed her pleasure. "Yes, we've got some things."
+
+"So Mr. Bender says!" he laughed. "You've got five or six--"
+
+"Only five or six?" she cried in bright alarm.
+
+"'Only'?" he continued to laugh. "Why, that's enormous, five or six
+things of the first importance! But I think I ought to mention to you,"
+he added, "a most barefaced 'Rubens' there in the library."
+
+"It isn't a Rubens?"
+
+"No more than I'm a Ruskin."
+
+"Then you'll brand us--expose us for it?"
+
+"No, I'll let you off--I'll be quiet if you're good, if you go straight.
+I'll only hold it _in terrorem_. One can't be sure in these dreadful
+days--that's always to remember; so that if you're not good I'll come
+down on you with it. But to balance against that threat," he went on,
+"I've made the very grandest find. At least I believe I have!"
+
+She was all there for this news. "Of the Manto-vano--hidden in the other
+thing?"
+
+Hugh wondered--almost as if she had been before him. "You don't mean to
+say _you've_ had the idea of that?"
+
+"No, but my father has told me."
+
+"And is your father," he eagerly asked, "really gratified?"
+
+With her conscious eyes on him--her eyes could clearly be very conscious
+about her father--she considered a moment. "He always prefers old
+associations and appearances to new; but I'm sure he'll resign himself
+if you see your way to a certainty."
+
+"Well, it will be a question of the weight of expert opinion that I
+shall invoke. But I'm not afraid," he resolutely said, "and I shall
+make the thing, from its splendid rarity, the crown and flower of your
+glory."
+
+Her serious face shone at him with a charmed gratitude. "It's awfully
+beautiful then your having come to us so. It's awfully beautiful your
+having brought us this way, in a flash--as dropping out of a chariot
+of fire--more light and what you apparently feel with myself as more
+honour."
+
+"Ah, the beauty's in your having yourself done it!" he returned. He
+gave way to the positive joy of it. "If I've brought the 'light' and the
+rest--that's to say the very useful information--who in the world was it
+brought _me?_"
+
+She had a gesture of protest "You'd have come in some other way."
+
+"I'm not so sure! I'm beastly shy--little as I may seem to show it: save
+in great causes, when I'm horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now
+at any rate I only know what _has_ been." She turned off for it, moving
+away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for unrest;
+and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. "But does
+anything in it all," he asked, "trouble you?"
+
+She faced about across the wider space, and there was a different note
+in what she brought out. "I don't know what forces me so to _tell_ you
+things."
+
+"'Tell' me?" he stared. "Why, you've told me nothing more monstrous than
+that I've been welcome!"
+
+"Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of
+our not 'going straight'? When you said you'd expose our bad--or is it
+our false?--Rubens in the event of a certain danger."
+
+"Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed"--he laughed again as with
+relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: "Why, to let
+anything--of your best!--ever leave Dedborough. By which I mean really
+of course leave the country." She turned again on this, and something
+in her air made him wonder. "I hope you don't feel there _is_ such a
+danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was unthinkable."
+
+"Well, it _was_, to me, half an hour ago," she said as she came nearer.
+"But if it has since come up?"
+
+"'If' it has! But _has_ it? In the form of that monster? What Mr. Bender
+wants is the great Duchess," he recalled.
+
+"And my father won't sell _her_? No, he won't sell the great
+Duchess--there I feel safe. But he greatly needs a certain sum of
+money--or he thinks he does--and I've just had a talk with him."
+
+"In which he has told you that?"
+
+"He has told me nothing," Lady Grace said--"or else told me quite other
+things. But the more I think of them the more it comes to me that he
+feels urged or tempted--"
+
+"To despoil and denude these walls?" Hugh broke in, looking about in his
+sharper apprehension.
+
+"Yes, to satisfy, to save my sister. _Now_ do you think our state so
+ideal?" she asked--but without elation for her hint of triumph.
+
+He had no answer for this save "Ah, but you terribly interest me. May I
+ask what's the matter with your sister?"
+
+Oh, she wanted to go on straight now! "The matter is--in the first
+place--that she's too dazzlingly, dreadfully beautiful."
+
+"More beautiful than you?" his sincerity easily risked.
+
+"Millions of times." Sad, almost sombre, she hadn't a shade of coquetry.
+"Kitty has debts--great heaped-up gaming debts."
+
+"But to such amounts?"
+
+"Incredible amounts it appears. And mountains of others too. She throws
+herself all on our father."
+
+"And he _has_ to pay them? There's no one else?" Hugh asked.
+
+She waited as if he might answer himself, and then as he apparently
+didn't, "He's only afraid there _may_ be some else--that's how she makes
+him do it," she said. And "Now do you think," she pursued, "that I don't
+tell you things?"
+
+He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she
+told him. "Oh, oh, oh!" And then, in the great place, while as, just
+spent by the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he
+took them all in. "That's the situation that, as you say, may force his
+hand."
+
+"It absolutely, I feel, does force it." And the renewal of her appeal
+brought her round. "Isn't it too lovely?"
+
+His frank disgust answered. "It's too damnable!"
+
+"And it's you," she quite terribly smiled, "who--by the 'irony of
+fate'!--have given him help."
+
+He smote his head in the light of it. "By the Mantovano?"
+
+"By the possible Mantovano--as a substitute for the impossible Sir
+Joshua. You've made him aware of a value."
+
+"Ah, but the value's to be fixed!"
+
+"Then Mr. Bender will fix it!"
+
+"Oh, but--as he himself would say--I'll fix Mr. Bender!" Hugh declared.
+"And he won't buy a pig in a poke."
+
+This cleared the air while they looked at each other; yet she had
+already asked: "What in the world can you do, and how in the world can
+you do it?"
+
+Well, he was too excited for decision. "I don't quite see now, but give
+me time." And he took out his watch as already to measure it. "Oughtn't
+I before I go to say a word to Lord Theign?"
+
+"Is it your idea to become a lion in his path?"
+
+"Well, say a cub--as that's what I'm afraid he'll call me! But I think I
+should speak to him."
+
+She drew a conclusion momentarily dark. "He'll have to learn in that
+case that I've told you of my fear."
+
+"And is there any good reason why he shouldn't?"
+
+She kept her eyes on him and the darkness seemed to clear. "No!" she at
+last replied, and, having gone to touch an electric bell, was with him
+again. "But I think I'm rather sorry for you."
+
+"Does that represent a reason why I should be so for you?"
+
+For a little she said nothing; but after that: "None whatever!"
+
+"Then is the sister of whom you speak Lady Imber?"
+
+Lady Grace, at this, raised her hand in caution: the butler had arrived,
+with due gravity, in answer to her ring; to whom she made known her
+desire. "Please say to his lordship--in the saloon or wherever--that
+Mr. Crimble must go." When Banks had departed, however, accepting the
+responsibility of this mission, she answered her friend's question. "The
+sister of whom I speak is Lady Imber."
+
+"She loses then so heavily at bridge?"
+
+"She loses more than she wins."
+
+Hugh gazed as with interest at these oddities of the great. "And yet she
+still plays?"
+
+"What else, in her set, should she do?"
+
+This he was quite unable to say; but he could after a moment's
+exhibition of the extent to which he was out of it put a question
+instead. "So _you're_ not in her set?"
+
+"I'm not in her set."
+
+"Then decidedly," he said, "I don't want to save her. I only want--"
+
+He was going on, but she broke in: "I know what you want!"
+
+He kept his eyes on her till he had made sure--and this deep exchange
+between them had a beauty. "So you're now _with_ me?"
+
+"I'm now _with_ you!"
+
+"Then," said Hugh, "shake hands on it"
+
+He offered her his hand, she took it, and their grasp became, as you
+would have seen in their fine young faces, a pledge in which they stood
+a minute locked. Lord Theign came upon them from the saloon in the midst
+of the process; on which they separated as with an air of its having
+consisted but of Hugh's leave-taking. With some such form of mere
+civility, at any rate, he appeared, by the manner in which he addressed
+himself to Hugh, to have supposed them occupied.
+
+"I'm sorry my daughter can't keep you; but I must at least thank you for
+your interesting view of my picture."
+
+Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of
+this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with
+a sense of possibly awkward consequences: "May I--before you're sure of
+your indebtedness--put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?" It
+sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous--as was in fact
+testified to by his lordship's quick stiff stare, full of wonder at
+so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. "If I
+contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of
+the work you speak of, may I have from you an assurance that my success
+isn't to serve as a basis for any peril--or possibility--of its leaving
+the country?"
+
+Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this,
+turned a shade pale. "You ask of me an 'assurance'?"
+
+Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look
+of having counted the cost of his step. "I'm afraid I _must_, you see."
+
+It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. "And
+pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?"
+
+"By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a
+service."
+
+Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called
+spirit. "A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir--and
+with which you may take it from me that I'm already quite prepared to
+dispense."
+
+"I'm sorry to appear indiscreet," our young man returned; "I'm sorry to
+have upset you in any way. But I can't overcome my anxiety--"
+
+Lord Theign took the words from his lips. "And you therefore invite
+me--at the end of half an hour in this house!--to account to you for my
+personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to
+your hands?"
+
+Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that
+stretched about him--the great loz-enged marble floor that might have
+figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to
+"stand." "I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed
+not to have seized any chance to appeal to you." Whatever difficulty he
+had had shyly to face didn't exist for him now. "I entreat you to think
+again, to think _well_, before you deprive us of such a source of just
+envy."
+
+"And you regard your entreaty as helped," Lord Theign asked, "by the
+beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?" Then as his
+monitor, arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who,
+showing in her face all the pain of the business, stood off at the
+distance to which a woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to
+violence as precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having
+turned: "I ask you that not less than I should like to know whom you
+speak of as 'deprived' of property that happens--for reasons that I
+don't suppose you also quarrel with!--to be mine."
+
+"Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign," Hugh said, "but I
+speak of _all_ of us--of all the people of England; who would deeply
+deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear
+you, I beseech you mercifully to consider."
+
+"The interest they bear me?"--the master of Dedborough fairly bristled
+with wonder. "Pray how the devil do they show it?"
+
+"I think they show it in all sorts of ways"--and Hugh's critical smile,
+at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner
+seeming to convey that he meant many things.
+
+"Understand then, please," said Lord Theign with every inch of his
+authority, "that they'll show it best by minding their own business
+while I very particularly mind mine."
+
+"You simply do, in other words," Hugh explicitly concluded, "what
+happens to be convenient to you."
+
+"In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to _you!_
+So that I need no longer detain you," Lord Theign added with the last
+dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
+
+The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while,
+unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the
+cycling-cap he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival.
+"I apologise, my lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your
+hospitality. But," he went on with his uncommended cheer, "my interest
+in your picture remains."
+
+Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere
+watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the
+first time. "And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and
+grows."
+
+It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone,
+judged her contribution superfluous. "I'm happy to hear it, Grace--but
+yours is another affair."
+
+"I think on the contrary that it's quite the same one," she
+returned--"since it's on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to
+you what he has." The resolution she had gathered while she awaited her
+chance sat in her charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter
+paternal glare. "I let him know that I supposed you to think of
+profiting by the importance of Mr. Bender's visit."
+
+"Then you might have spared, my dear, your--I suppose and hope
+well-meant--interpretation of my mind." Lord Theign showed himself at
+this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without
+having been in the wrong. "Mr. Bender's visit will terminate--as soon
+as he has released Lord John--without my having profited in the smallest
+particular."
+
+Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. "It was
+Lady Grace's anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her,
+that my idea about the Moretto would add to your power--well," he pushed
+on not without awkwardness, "of 'realising' advantageously on such a
+prospective rise."
+
+Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to
+Lady Grace. "Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any
+association with this gentleman's ideas--whether about the Moretto or
+about anything else--his further application of them ceases from this
+moment to concern us."
+
+The girl's rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across
+their companion. "Will you make your inquiry for _me_ then?"
+
+The light again kindled in him. "With all the pleasure in life!" He
+had found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for
+departure, with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the
+direction from which he had entered.
+
+Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to
+Lady Grace. "I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public
+defiance of me!"
+
+They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance
+she met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms
+into which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not
+following it up. She pronounced in quick warning "Lord John!"--for
+their friend, released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was
+already there.
+
+He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. "Bender's at last
+off, but"--he indicated the direction of the garden front--"you may
+still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate."
+
+Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained.
+He looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from
+his daughter's suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious
+young woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had
+a gesture of almost desperate indifference and passed quickly out by the
+door to the terrace.
+
+It had left Lord John gaping. "What on earth's the matter with your
+father?"
+
+"What on earth indeed?" Lady Grace unaidingly asked. "Is he discussing
+with that awful man?"
+
+"Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?" Lord John showed
+surprise--which might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he
+shook everything off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old
+Bender away. "My dear girl, what do _we_ care--?"
+
+"I care immensely, I assure you," she interrupted, "and I ask of you,
+please, to tell me!"
+
+Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected,
+threw him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. "Ah, it's not
+for such a matter I'm here, Lady Grace--I'm here with that fond question
+of my own." And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement
+motion of protest: "I've come for your kind answer--the answer your
+father instructed me to count on."
+
+"I've no kind answer to give you!"--she raised forbidding hands. "I
+entreat you to leave me alone."
+
+There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as
+if stricken by violence. "In God's name then what has happened--when you
+almost gave me your word?"
+
+"What has happened is that I've found it impossible to listen to you."
+And she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
+
+He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in
+her quick circuit of the hall. "That's all you've got to say to me after
+what has passed between us?"
+
+He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her
+passionate denial set him a limit. "I've got to say--sorry as I am--that
+if you _must_ have an answer it's this: that never, Lord John, never,
+can there be anything more between us." And her gesture cleared her
+path, permitting her to achieve her flight. "Never, no, never," she
+repeated as she went--"never, never, never!" She got off by the door at
+which she had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and
+defeated, left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a
+chair and remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the
+great blank splendour.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK SECOND
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by
+the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person
+coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr.
+Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway
+forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample,
+lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection
+with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not
+immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.
+
+"But Mr. Crimble------?"
+
+"Here he is, my lady." And he made way for that gentleman, who
+emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt
+withdrawal.
+
+"I went in for a minute, with your servant's permission," Hugh
+explained, "to see your famous Lawrence--which is splendid; he was so
+good as to arrange the light." The young man's dress was of a form less
+relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft
+felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the
+limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.
+
+Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
+act. "Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do--and even seems to
+have ended by taking her for his very own."
+
+"One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of
+her line," Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement
+of replying; "and I must make sure of another look at her when I've a
+good deal more time."
+
+His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. "You hadn't then come
+_for_ the poor dear?" And then as he obviously hadn't, but for something
+quite else: "I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be
+coveted--!" It dropped with a yearning sigh.
+
+"You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?" Hugh asked. "Ah, I
+shall never do their work--unless to betray them: _that_ I shouldn't in
+the least mind!--and I'm here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your
+consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if
+she can kindly give me time."
+
+"You've known then of her being with me?"
+
+"I've known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,"
+he explained; "of her wishing not to go to her sister's, and of Lord
+Theign's having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of
+proceeding, to some foreign part."
+
+"And you've learnt it from having seen her--these three or four weeks?"
+
+"I've met her--but just barely--two or three times: at a 'private view'
+at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn't told
+you?"
+
+Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her
+thick lustre. "I wanted to see how much _you'd_ tell." She waited even
+as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. "Once again at
+dinner?"
+
+"Yes, but alas not near her!"
+
+"Once then at a private view?--when, with the squash they usually are,
+you might have been very near her indeed!"
+
+The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
+"Yes--it _was_ a squash!"
+
+"And once," his hostess pursued, "in the lobby of the opera?"
+
+"After 'Tristan'--yes; but with some awful grand people I didn't know."
+
+She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. "Oh, the Pennimans are
+nobody! But now," she asked, "you've come, you say, on 'business'?"
+
+"Very important, please--which accounts for the hour I've ventured and
+the appearance I present."
+
+"I don't ask you too much to 'account,'" Lady Sandgate kindly said; "but
+I can't not wonder if she hasn't told you what things have happened."
+
+He cast about. "She has had no chance to tell me anything--beyond the
+fact of her being here."
+
+"Without the reason?"
+
+"'The reason'?" he echoed.
+
+She gave it up, going straighter. "She's with me then as an old firm
+friend. Under my care and protection."
+
+"I see"--he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint in
+respect to himself. "She puts you on your guard."
+
+Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. "She puts me on my
+honour--or at least her father does."
+
+"As to her seeing _me_"
+
+"As to _my_ seeing at least--what may happen to her."
+
+"Because--you say--things _have_ happened?"
+
+His companion fairly sounded him. "You've only talked--when you've
+met--of 'art'?"
+
+"Well," he smiled, "'art is long'!"
+
+"Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord
+Theign is presently due--"
+
+"_Here_, back already from abroad?"--he was all alert.
+
+"He has not yet gone--he comes up this morning to start."
+
+"And stops here on his way?"
+
+"To take the _train de luxe_ this afternoon to his annual Salsomaggiore.
+But with so little time to spare," she went on reassuringly, "that,
+to simplify--as he wired me an hour ago from Dedborough--he has given
+rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is particularly to wait for him."
+
+"And who may therefore arrive at any moment?"
+
+She looked at her bracelet watch. "Scarcely before noon. So you'll just
+have your chance--"
+
+"Thank the powers then!"--Hugh grasped at it. "I shall have it best if
+you'll be so good as to tell me first--well," he faltered, "what it is
+that, to my great disquiet, you've further alluded to; what it is that
+has occurred."
+
+Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
+pronounced. "Haven't you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
+father's extreme reprobation?"
+
+"Yes, so much as that--that she must have greatly annoyed him--I have
+been supposing. But isn't it by her having asked me to act for her? I
+mean about the Mantovano--which I _have_ done."
+
+Lady Sandgate wondered. "You've 'acted'?"
+
+"It's what I've come to tell her at last--and I'm all impatience."
+
+"I see, I see"--she had caught a clue. "He hated that--yes; but you
+haven't really made out," she put to him, "the _other_ effect of your
+hour at Dedborough?" She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
+his divination had failed, and she didn't trouble him to confess it.
+"Directly you had gone she 'turned down' Lord John. Declined, I mean,
+the offer of his hand in marriage."
+
+Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. "He proposed
+there--?"
+
+"He had spoken, that day, _before_--before your talk with Lord Theign,
+who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
+Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you _had_
+gone, for his answer--"
+
+"She wouldn't have him?" Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.
+
+But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. "She wouldn't look
+at him."
+
+He bethought himself. "But had she said she would?"
+
+"So her father indignantly considers."
+
+"That's the _ground_ of his indignation?"
+
+"He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
+crisis."
+
+Hugh Crimble turned this over--feeling apparently for something he
+didn't find. "I'm sorry to hear such things, but where's the connection
+with me?"
+
+"Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don't see any---!" In that case,
+Lady Sandgate's motion implied, she washed her hands of it.
+
+Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
+to guess a conundrum--which he gave up. "I really don't see any, Lady
+Sandgate. But," he a little inconsistently said, "I'm greatly obliged to
+you for telling me."
+
+"Don't mention it!--though I think it _is_ good of me," she smiled, "on
+so short an acquaintance." To which she added more gravely: "I leave you
+the situation--but I'm willing to let you know that I'm all on Grace's
+side."
+
+"So am I, _rather!_--please let me frankly say."
+
+He clearly refreshed, he even almost charmed her. "It's the very least
+you can say!--though I'm not sure whether you say it as the simplest
+or as the very subtlest of men. But in case you don't know as I do how
+little the particular candidate I've named----"
+
+"Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?" he broke in--all quick
+intelligence here at least. "No, I don't perhaps know as well as you
+do--but I think I know as well as I just yet require."
+
+"There you are then! And if you did prevent," his hostess maturely
+pursued, "what wouldn't have been--well, good or nice, I'm quite on your
+side too."
+
+Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at
+a meaning. "You're with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of
+effort or ingenuity--"
+
+"The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?"--she took his presumed sense
+faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her reply
+to it. "Well, will you keep the secret of everything I've said or say?"
+
+"To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!"
+
+"Then," she momentously returned, "I only want, too, to make Bender
+impossible. If you ask me," she pursued, "how I arrange that with my
+deep loyalty to Lord Theign----"
+
+"I don't ask you anything of the sort," he interrupted--"I wouldn't ask
+you for the world; and my own bright plan for achieving the _coup_ you
+mention------"
+
+"You'll have time, at the most," she said, consulting afresh her
+bracelet watch, "to explain to Lady Grace." She reached an electric
+bell, which she touched--facing then her visitor again with an abrupt
+and slightly embarrassed change of tone. "You do think _my_ great
+portrait splendid?"
+
+He had strayed far from it and all too languidly came back. "Your
+Lawrence there? As I said, magnificent."
+
+But the butler had come in, interrupting, straight from the lobby; of
+whom she made her request. "Let her ladyship know--Mr. Crimble."
+
+Gotch looked hard at Hugh and the crumpled hat--almost as if having an
+option. But he resigned himself to repeating, with a distinctness that
+scarce fell short of the invidious, "Mr. Crimble," and departed on his
+errand.
+
+Lady Sandgate's fair flush of diplomacy had meanwhile not faded.
+"Couldn't you, with your immense cleverness and power, get the
+Government to do something?"
+
+"About your picture?" Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment.
+"You too then want to sell?"
+
+Oh she righted herself. "Never to a private party!"
+
+"Mr. Bender's not after it?" he asked--though scarce lighting his
+reluctant interest with a forced smile.
+
+"Most intensely after it. But never," cried the proprietress, "to a
+bloated alien!"
+
+"Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not," he asked, "carrying
+that magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as
+the object itself?"
+
+"Give it you for nothing?" She threw up shocked hands. "Because I'm an
+aged female pauper and can't make _every_ sacrifice."
+
+Hugh pretended--none too convincingly--to think. "Will you let them have
+it very cheap?"
+
+"Yes--for less than such a bribe as Bender's."
+
+"Ah," he said expressively, "that might be, and still----!"
+
+"Well," she had a flare of fond confidence. "I'll find out what he'll
+offer--if you'll on your side do what you can--and then ask them a third
+less." And she followed it up--as if suddenly conceiving him a prig.
+"See here, Mr. Crimble, I've been--and this very first time I--charming
+to you."
+
+"You have indeed," he returned; "but you throw back on it a lurid light
+if it has all been for _that!_"
+
+"It has been--well, to keep things as I want them; and if I've given you
+precious information mightn't you on your side--"
+
+"Estimate its value in cash?"--Hugh sharply took her up. "Ah, Lady
+Sandgate, I _am_ in your debt, but if you really bargain for your
+precious information I'd rather we assume that I haven't enjoyed it."
+
+She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady
+Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the
+nearer door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. "I
+won't bargain with the Treasury!"--she had passed out by the time Lady
+Grace arrived.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+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 Pappen-dick, 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 incoming 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'?"
+
+"Can't I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?"--he had his answer
+ready. "You've sought asylum with this good friend from the effects of
+your father's resentment."
+
+"'Sought asylum' is perhaps excessive," Lady Grace returned--"though
+it wasn't pleasant with him after that hour, no," she allowed. "And I
+couldn't go, you see, to Kitty."
+
+"No indeed, you couldn't go to Kitty." He smiled at her hard as he
+added: "I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is
+it that I've set you adrift--that I've darkened and poisoned your days.
+You're paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so
+gallantly in my grand remonstrance."
+
+She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again--as if
+accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of
+her state. "Why do you talk of it as 'paying'--if it's all to come back
+to my _being_ paid? I mean by your blest success--if you really do what
+you want."
+
+"I have your word for it," he searchingly said, "that our really pulling
+it off together will make up to you----?"
+
+"I should be ashamed if it didn't, for everything!"--she took the
+question from his mouth. "I believe in such a cause exactly as you
+do--and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your
+faith."
+
+"Then you'll help me no end," he said all simply and sincerely.
+
+"You've helped _me_ already"--that she gave him straight back. And on it
+they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.
+
+"You're very wonderful--for a girl!" Hugh brought out.
+
+"One _has_ to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one's house,"
+she laughed; "and that's all I am of ours--but a true and a right and a
+straight one."
+
+He glowed with his admiration. "You're splendid!"
+
+That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any
+rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. "I see our situation."
+
+"So do I, Lady Grace!" he cried with the strongest emphasis. "And your
+father only doesn't."
+
+"Yes," she said for intelligent correction--"he sees it, there's nothing
+in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong."
+
+Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that
+he wouldn't have seized. "He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other
+day he took as a rude protest. And any protest----"
+
+"Any protest," she quickly and fully agreed, "he takes as an offence,
+yes. It's his theory that he still has rights," she smiled, "though he
+_is_ a miserable peer."
+
+"How should he not have rights," said Hugh, "when he has really
+everything on earth?"
+
+"Ah, he doesn't even _know_ that--he takes it so much for granted." And
+she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. "He
+lives all in his own world."
+
+"He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours--quite
+as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube." With which
+Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. "And he must be
+here to do business to-day."
+
+"You know," Lady Grace asked, "that he's to meet Mr. Bender?"
+
+"Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and," her companion saw as he glanced
+at the clock on the chimney, "I've only ten minutes, at best. The
+'Journal' won't have been good for him," he added--"you doubtless have
+seen the 'Journal'?"
+
+"No"--she was vague. "We live by the 'Morning Post.'"
+
+"That's why our friend here didn't speak then," Hugh said with a better
+light--"which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn't do, either.
+But they've a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi,
+and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty--if we don't do
+something energetic--of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering
+horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge
+cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the
+rumour current--as too horrific to believe--of Lord Theign's putting up
+his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such
+sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and
+momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent
+authorities."
+
+"Of whom," said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, "you're of
+course seen as not the least."
+
+"Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I'm as yet--however I'm 'seen'--the
+whole collection. But we've time"--he rested on that "The fat, if you'll
+allow me the expression, is on the fire--which, as I see the matter, is
+where this particular fat _should_ be."
+
+"Is the article, then," his companion appealed, "very severe?"
+
+"I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent--and the
+great thing is that it immensely 'marks,' as they say. It will have made
+a big public difference--from this day; though it's of course aimed not
+so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow
+to tackle."
+
+"Exactly"--she was full of the saving vision; "but as the conditions are
+directly embodied in persons----"
+
+"Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it
+bells three or four."
+
+"Yes," she richly brooded--"Lady Lappington _is_ a cat!"
+
+"She will have been 'belled,' at any rate, with your father," Hugh
+amusedly went on, "to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good
+for us--I mean for _us_ in particular." Yet he had to bethink himself.
+"The case depends a good deal of course on how your father _takes_ such
+a resounding rap."
+
+"Oh, I know how he'll take it!"--her perception went all the way.
+
+"In the very highest and properest spirit?"
+
+"Well, you'll see." She was as brave as she was clear. "Or at least I
+shall!"
+
+Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. "You _are_, yes,
+splendid!"
+
+"I even," she laughed, "surprise myself."
+
+But he was already back at his calculations. "How early do the papers
+get to you?"
+
+"At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast--which isn't, however, very
+early."
+
+"Then that's what has caused his wire to Bender."
+
+"But how will such talk strike _him_?" the girl asked.
+
+Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought,
+he had let it lead him to certainty. "It will have moved Mr. Bender to
+absolute rapture."
+
+"Rather," Lady Grace wondered, "than have put him off?"
+
+"It will have put him prodigiously _on!_ Mr. Bender--as he said to me
+at Dedborough of his noble host there," Hugh pursued--"is 'a very nice
+man'; but he's a product of the world of advertisment, and advertisement
+is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish
+in water."
+
+She took it from him as half doubting. "But mayn't advertisement, in so
+special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?"
+
+Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught
+from foreign comrades. "He rides the biggest whirlwind--he has got it
+saddled and bitted."
+
+She faced the image, but cast about "Then where does our success come
+in?"
+
+"In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him."
+And Hugh further pointed the moral. "If in such proceedings all he
+knows is publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it's only a
+question of giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself,
+you see, he'll have too much for every one else--so that we shall 'up'
+in a body and slay him."
+
+The girl's eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. "But if
+he has meanwhile got the picture?"
+
+"We'll slay him before he gets it!" He revelled in the breadth of his
+view. "Our own policy must be to _organise_ to that end the inevitable
+outcry. Organise Bender himself--organise him to scandal." Hugh had
+already even pity to spare for their victim. "He won't know it from a
+boom."
+
+Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. "But that
+will be only if he wants and decides for the picture."
+
+"We must make him then want and decide for it--decide, that is, for
+'ours.' To save it we must work him up--he'll in that case want it so
+indecently much. Then _we_ shall have to want it more!"
+
+"Well," she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, "you can take a
+horse to water----!"
+
+"Oh, trust me to make him drink!"
+
+There appeared a note in this that convinced her. "It's you, Mr.
+Crimble, who are 'splendid'!"
+
+"Well, I shall be--with my jolly wire!" And all on that scent again,
+"May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick's news?" he asked.
+
+"Why, rather, of course, come back!"
+
+"Only not," he debated, "till your father has left."
+
+Lady Grace considered too, but sharply decided. "Come when you _have_
+it. But tell me first," she added, "one thing." She hung fire a little
+while he waited, but she brought it out. "Was it you who got the
+'Journal' to speak?"
+
+"Ah, one scarcely 'gets' the 'Journal'!"
+
+"Who then gave them their 'tip'?"
+
+"About the Mantovano and its peril?" Well, he took a moment--but only
+not to say; in addition to which the butler had reappeared, entering
+from the lobby. "I'll tell you," he laughed, "when I come back!"
+
+Gotch had his manner of announcement while the visitor was mounting the
+stairs. "Mr. Breckenridge Bender!"
+
+"Ah then I go," said Lady Grace at once.
+
+"I'll stay three minutes." Hugh turned with her, alertly, to the easier
+issue, signalling hope and cheer from that threshold as he watched her
+disappear; after which he faced about with as brave a smile and as ready
+for immediate action as if she had there within kissed her hand to him.
+Mr. Bender emerged at the same instant, Gotch withdrawing and closing
+the door behind him; and the former personage, recognising his young
+friend, threw up his hands for friendly pleasure.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Ah, Mr. Crimble," he cordially inquired, "you've come with your great
+news?"
+
+Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment.
+"News of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven't news _yet_." But he
+added as with high candour for the visitor's motion of disappointment:
+"I think I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four
+weeks."
+
+"Well, in _my_ country," Mr. Bender returned with disgust, "it would
+take three or four minutes! Can't you make 'em step more lively?"
+
+"I'm expecting, sir," said Hugh good-humouredly, "a report from hour to
+hour."
+
+"Then will you let me have it right off?"
+
+Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: "Ah, it's scarcely
+for you, Mr. Bender, that I'm acting!"
+
+The great collector was but briefly checked. "Well, can't you just act
+for Art?"
+
+"Oh, you're doing that yourself so powerfully," Hugh laughed, "that I
+think I had best leave it to you!"
+
+His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a
+new improvement. "Don't you want to go round acting _with_ me?"
+
+"Go 'on tour,' as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender," Hugh said, "if I
+had any weight----!"
+
+"You'd add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that _you_
+should go back on me--after working me up so down there? The worst I've
+done," Mr. Bender continued, "is to refuse that Moretto."
+
+"Has it deplorably been _offered_ you?" our young man cried,
+unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his
+fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving
+the owner of the great work away: "Then why are you--as if you were a
+banished Romeo--so keen for news from Verona?" To this odd mixture of
+business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself
+with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of
+tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: "Aren't you here,
+sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?"
+
+"I'm here," he then imperturbably said, "because Lord Theign has wired
+me to meet him. Ain't you here for that yourself?"
+
+Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a "big" choice of answers.
+"Dear, no! I've but been in, by Lady Sandgate's leave, to see that grand
+Lawrence."
+
+"Ah yes, she's very kind about it--one does go 'in.'" After which Mr.
+Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity.
+"Is any one _after_ that grand Lawrence?"
+
+"Oh, I hope not," Hugh laughed, "unless you again dreadfully are:
+wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there."
+
+"You call it," Mr. Bender impartially inquired, "a _very_ wonderful
+thing?"
+
+"Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over"--Hugh spoke as for
+the strictly aesthetic awkwardness of that. "But you know I take my
+pictures hard." He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this
+connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. "I must make my
+little _rapport_." Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain. "We're
+a band of young men who care--and we watch the great things. Also--for I
+must give you the real truth about myself--we watch the great people."
+
+"Well, I guess I'm used to being watched--if that's the worst you can
+do." To which Mr. Bender added in his homely way: "But you know, Mr.
+Crimble, what I'm _really_ after."
+
+Hugh's strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. "The man in
+this morning's 'Journal' appears at least to have discovered."
+
+"Yes, the man in this morning's 'Journal' has discovered three or four
+weeks--as it appears to take you here for everything--after my beginning
+to talk. Why, they knew I was talking _that_ time ago on the other
+side."
+
+"Oh, they know things in the States," Hugh cheerfully agreed, "so
+independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud."
+
+"Well, I haven't so much talked as raved," Mr. Bender conceded--"for I'm
+afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me
+at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the
+echo."
+
+"Then they'll make up for lost time! But have you done it," Hugh asked,
+"to prepare an alibi?"
+
+"An alibi?"
+
+"By 'raving,' as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don't think
+you at all believe you'll get the Sir Joshua--but meanwhile we shall
+have cleared up the question of the Moretto."
+
+Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn't speak till he had done justice to this
+picture of his subtlety. "Then, why on earth do you want to boom the
+Moretto?"
+
+"You ask that," said Hugh, "because it's the boomed thing that's most in
+peril."
+
+"Well, it's the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag
+their value to the light why shouldn't we want to grab them and carry
+them off--the same as all of _you_ originally did?"
+
+"Ah, not quite the same," Hugh smiled--"that I _will_ say for you!"
+
+"Yes, you stick it on now--you _have_ got an eye for the rise in values.
+But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad
+that, to such a time, I'll pay it you."
+
+Our young man kept, during a moment's thought, his eyes on his
+companion, and then resumed with all intensity and candour: "You may
+easily, Mr. Bender, be too much for me--as you appear too much for far
+greater people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on
+_this_, as to any case in which that happens--that when precious things,
+things we are to lose here, _are_ knocked down to you, you'll let us at
+least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before
+they're borne off?"
+
+Mr. Bender's big face fell almost with a crash. "Hand them over, you
+mean, to the sandwich men on Bond Street?"
+
+"To one or other of the placard and poster men--I don't insist on the
+inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be
+on view for three or four weeks."
+
+"You ask me," Mr. Bender returned, "for a _general_ assurance to that
+effect?"
+
+"Well, a particular one--so it be particular enough," Hugh said--"will
+do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue--well, of the value
+that's actually in the scales."
+
+"The Mantovano-Moretto?"
+
+"The Moretto-Mantovano!"
+
+Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. "Hadn't we better know which it is
+first?"
+
+Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. "The public
+interest--playing so straight on the question--may help to settle it.
+By which I mean that it will profit enormously--the question of
+probability, of identity itself will--by the discussion it will create.
+The discussion will promote certainty----"
+
+"And certainty," Mr. Bender massively mused, "will kick up a row."
+
+"_Of course_ it will kick up a row!"--Hugh thoroughly guaranteed that.
+"You'll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England--if you
+venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign."
+
+"Whom it won't be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing
+down."
+
+"But whom it will be exceedingly _mine_ to practise on"--and Hugh
+laughed as at the fun before them--"if I may entertain the sweet hope
+of success. The only thing is--from my point of view," he went on--"that
+backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn't in the least
+in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should be really
+too much of it for his taste or his nerves he'll set his handsome face
+as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what I appeal to
+you for will have taken place--the picture will have been seen by a lot
+of people who'll care."
+
+"It will have been seen," Mr. Bender amended--"on the mere contingency
+of my acquisition of it--only if its present owner consents."
+
+"'Consents'?" Hugh almost derisively echoed; "why, he'll propose it
+himself, he'll insist on it, he'll put it through, once he's angry
+enough--as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal
+act of his will be sure to make him; and I'm afraid the striking
+criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown
+on his flame of bravado."
+
+Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion.
+"Yes, I guess he's pretty mad."
+
+"They've imputed to him"--Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense--"an
+intention of which after all he isn't guilty."
+
+"So that"--his listener glowed with interested optimism--"if they don't
+look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he'll just go and be
+guilty!"
+
+Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly
+elated by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped.
+"You entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh
+fisher in troubled waters?" And then with a finer art, as his companion,
+expansively bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound
+_him_: "The strongest thing in such a type--one does make out--is his
+resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is
+quite that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the
+groaning board of his banquet of life to _be_ such a liberty."
+
+Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed
+aristocratic illusion. "Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes,
+the way those of you who have got things fixed for them _do_, over here;
+and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark--"
+
+But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced
+to the mere synthetic interjection "My!"
+
+"That's it, Mr. Bender," Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral;
+"he won't quit it without a hard struggle."
+
+Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high
+calculation of impunity. "Well, I guess he won't struggle too hard for
+me to hold on to him if I _want_ to!"
+
+"In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be," Hugh returned,
+"don't forget what I've urged on you--the claim of our desolate
+country."
+
+But his friend had an answer to this. "My natural interest, Mr.
+Crimble--considering what I do for it--is in the claim of ours. But I
+wish you were on my side!"
+
+"Not so much," Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, "as I wish you were
+on mine!" Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. "Good-bye--for another
+look here!"
+
+He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his
+companion, freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. "How much is
+she really worth?"
+
+"'She'?" Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. "Lady Sandgate?"
+
+"Her great-grandmother."
+
+A responsible answer was prevented--the butler was again with them; he
+had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage
+under his convoy. "Lord John!"
+
+Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape.
+"Oh, ask _that_ friend!" With which he sought the further passage to the
+staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch,
+who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that
+her ladyship would come, left them together.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Then Theign's not yet here!" Lord John had to resign himself as he
+greeted his American ally. "But he told me I should find you."
+
+"He has kept me waiting," that gentleman returned--"but what's the
+matter with him anyway?"
+
+"The matter with him"--Lord John treated such ignorance as
+irritating--"must of course be this beastly thing in the 'Journal.'"
+
+Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such
+connections. "What's the matter with the beastly thing?"
+
+"Why, aren't you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at
+you?"
+
+"If you call _that_ a regular dig you can't have had much experience of
+the Papers. I've known them to dig much deeper."
+
+"I've had _no_ experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but do
+you mean to say," asked Lord John with the surprise of his own delicacy,
+"that you don't unpleasantly feel it?"
+
+"Feel it where, my dear sir?"
+
+"Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!"
+
+"All over me at once?"--Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. "Well,
+I'm a large man--so when I want to feel so much I look out for something
+good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine--ain't that
+what you wear?--does our friend propose to do about it?"
+
+Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the
+apprehension of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before
+them, having reached them through the other room, and to her he at once
+referred the question. "What _will_ Theign propose, do you think, Lady
+Sandgate, to do about it?"
+
+She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. "To 'do'----?"
+
+"Don't you know about the thing in the 'Journal'--awfully offensive all
+round?"
+
+"There'd be even a little pinch for _you_ in it," Mr. Bender said to
+her--"if you were bent on fitting the shoe!"
+
+Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her
+elder guest while she took her place with them. "Oh, the shoes of such
+monsters as that are much too big for poor _me!_" But she was more
+specific for Lord John. "I know only what Grace has just told me; but
+since it's a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly--what you
+may call--take his stand!"
+
+Lord John welcomed this assurance. "If I know him he'll take it
+splendidly!"
+
+Mr. Bender's attention was genial, though rather more detached. "And
+what--while he's about it--will he take it particularly _on?_"
+
+"Oh, we've plenty of things, thank heaven," said Lady Sandgate, "for a
+man in Theign's position to hold fast by!"
+
+Lord John freely confirmed it. "Scores and scores--rather! And I will
+say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may
+soon become a real convenience."
+
+Mr. Bender seemed struck--and not unsympathetic. "I see that your system
+would be rather a fraud if you hadn't pretty well fixed _that!_"
+
+Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned
+and convinced. "It doesn't, however, alter the fact that we've thus in
+our ears the first growl of an outcry."
+
+"Ah," Lord John concurred, "we've unmistakably the first growl of an
+outcry!"
+
+Mr. Bender's judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign,
+introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the
+result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself.
+"Why, they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl
+of an outcry!"
+
+The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been
+held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least
+that a certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his
+lordship's aspect would have been explained by his having taken the
+full measure--an inner success with which he glowed--of some high
+provocation. He was flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house;
+he was so admirably, vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his
+journey, that he shone as with the armour of a knight; and the whole
+effect of him, from head to foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and
+every flash of his ease, was to call attention to his being utterly
+unshaken and knowing perfectly what he was about. It was at this happy
+pitch that he replied to the prime upsetter of his peace.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know what anything means to _you_, Mr. Bender--but
+it's exactly to find out that I've asked you, with our friend John,
+kindly to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your
+good leave," he went on to Lady Sandgate; "at which I'm only too pleased
+that you yourself should assist. The 'first growl' of any outcry, I may
+mention to you all, affects me no more than the last will----!"
+
+"So I'm delighted to gather"--Lady Sandgate took him straight up--"that
+you don't let go your inestimable Cure."
+
+He at first quite stared superior--"'Let go'?"--but then treated it with
+a lighter touch. "Upon my honour I might, you know--that dose of the
+daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate," he pursued
+to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, "I arrive with my
+decision taken--which I've thought may perhaps interest you. If that
+tuppeny rot _is_ an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud."
+
+Lord John rejoicingly approved. "Absolutely the only way--with the least
+self-respect--to treat it!"
+
+Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. "But are you
+sure it's so easy, Theign, to hush up a _real_ noise?"
+
+"It ain't what I'd call a real one, Lady Sandgate," Mr. Bender said;
+"you can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two
+or three mice! But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will
+interest me to hear what sort of a trap--by what you say--you propose to
+set for them."
+
+"You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender," his lordship
+replied, "the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my
+absolutely personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin
+of any definite report of which--in such circles!--I'm afraid I rather
+wonder if you yourself can't give me a clue."
+
+It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. "You
+rather wonder if I've talked of how I feel about your detaining in your
+hands my Beautiful Duchess----?"
+
+"Oh, if you've already published her as 'yours'--with your _power_
+of publication!" Lord Theign coldly laughed,--"of course I trace the
+connection!"
+
+Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of
+a pang. "Why, I haven't for quite a while talked of a blessed other
+thing--and I'm capable of growing more profane over my _not_ getting her
+than I guess any one would dare to be if I did."
+
+"Well, you'll certainly not 'get' her, Mr. Bender," Lady Sandgate, as
+for reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; "and even if there were a
+chance of it don't you see that your way wouldn't be publicly to abuse
+our noble friend?"
+
+Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. "Oh, I guess
+our noble friend knows I _have_ to talk big about big things. You
+understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!"
+
+"I'll forgive you," Lord Theign civilly returned, "all the big talk
+you like if you'll now understand _me_. My retort to that hireling pack
+shall be at once to dispose of a picture."
+
+Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. "But that's what you wanted to do
+before."
+
+"Pardon me," said his lordship--"I make a difference. It's what you
+wanted me to do."
+
+The mystification, however, continued. "And you were _not_--as you
+seemed then--willing?"
+
+Lord Theign waived cross-questions. "Well, I'm willing _now_--that's all
+that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time," he added
+with all authority, "you can't have our Duchess!"
+
+"You can't have our Duchess!"--and Lord John, as before the altar of
+patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.
+
+"You can't have our Duchess!" Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace
+that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet
+sociability as she added: "I wish he'd tell you too, you dreadful rich
+thing, that you can't have anything at all!"
+
+Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that
+rigour. "Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?"
+
+"And what--as it _is_," Mr. Bender asked--"becomes of my unhappy
+grievance?"
+
+"Wouldn't a really great capture make up to you for that?"
+
+"Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have--and it
+depends, don't you see, on how you measure the size."
+
+Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. "Shouldn't you
+like to go back there and take the measure yourself?"
+
+Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. "Look again at
+that tottering Moretto?"
+
+"Well, its size--as you say--isn't in _any_ light a negligible
+quantity."
+
+"You mean that--big as it is--it hasn't yet stopped growing?"
+
+The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord
+Theign himself meant "It's more to the purpose," he said to Mr. Bender,
+"that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words
+the very essence, of my plan of campaign--which is to put the picture at
+once on view." He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. "On
+view as a thing definitely disposed of."
+
+"I say, I say, I say!" cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to
+high admiration.
+
+Lady Sandgate's approval was more qualified. "But on view, dear Theign,
+how?"
+
+"With one of those pushing people in Bond Street." And then as for the
+crushing climax of his policy: "As a Mantovano pure and simple."
+
+"But my dear man," she quavered, "if it _isn't_ one?"
+
+Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him
+and he let out sail. "Lady Sand-gate, it's going, by all that's--well,
+interesting, to _be_ one!"
+
+Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. "You seize me? We _treat_ it as
+one!"
+
+Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. "We _treat_ it as one!"
+
+Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought--he even
+gave it back larger. "As the long-lost Number Eight!"
+
+Lord Theign happily seized _him_. "That will be it--to a charm!"
+
+"It will make them," Mr. Bender asked, "madder than anything?"
+
+His patron--if not his client--put it more nobly. "It will markedly
+affirm my attitude."
+
+"Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion."
+
+"It may create all it will!"
+
+"Well, if _you_ don't mind it, _I_ don't!" Mr. Bender concluded. But
+though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid application
+of it elsewhere. "You'll put the thing on view right off?"
+
+"As soon as the proper arrangement----"
+
+"You put off your journey to _make_ it?" Lady Sand-gate at once broke in.
+
+Lord Theign bethought himself--with the effect of a gracious confidence
+in the others. "Not if these friends will act."
+
+"Oh, I guess we'll _act!_" Mr. Bender declared.
+
+"Ah, _won't_ we though!" Lord John re-echoed.
+
+"You understand then I have an interest?" Mr. Bender went on to Lord
+Theign.
+
+His lordship's irony met it. "I accept that complication--which so much
+simplifies!"
+
+"And yet also have a liberty?"
+
+"Where else would be those you've taken? The point is," said Lord
+Theign, "that _I_ have a show."
+
+It settled Mr. Bender. "Then I'll _fix_ your show." He snatched up his
+hat. "Lord John, come right round!"
+
+Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the
+whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking
+leave of the others he gave it even his applause. "The fellow can do
+anything anywhere!" And he hastily followed.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their
+companion's enthusiasm. "That may be true of Mr. Bender--for it's
+dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror."
+
+"Well," said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the
+question, "I dare say a terror will help me." He had other business to
+which he at once gave himself. "And now, if you please, for that girl."
+
+"I'll send her to you," she replied, "if you can't stay to luncheon."
+
+"I've three or four things to do," he pleaded, "and I lunch with Kitty
+at one."
+
+She submitted in that case--but disappointedly. "With Berkeley
+Square then you've time. But I confess I don't quite grasp the so odd
+inspiration that you've set those men to carry out."
+
+He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. "Then it
+needn't trouble you, dear--it's enough that I myself go straight."
+
+"Are you so very convinced it's straight?"--she wouldn't be a bore to
+him, but she couldn't not be a blessing.
+
+"What in the world else is it," he asked, "when, having good reasons,
+one acts on 'em?"
+
+"You must have an immense array," she sighed, "to fly so in the face of
+Opinion!"
+
+"'Opinion'?" he commented--"I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing,
+as I'm taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my
+umbrella and send it about its business." To which he added with more
+reproach: "It's enough to have been dished by Grace--without _your_
+falling away!"
+
+Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. "It's only my great
+affection--and all that these years have been for us: _they_ it is that
+make me wish you weren't so proud."
+
+"I've a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us--a
+very charming matter. But 'proud' is it you find me of the daughter who
+does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?"
+
+Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point
+of this. "Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair--but are you sure
+you can really bear to see Grace?"
+
+"I seem expected indeed to bear much," he said with more and more of his
+parental bitterness, "but I don't know that I'm yet in a funk before
+my child. Doesn't she _want_ to see me, with any contrition, after the
+trick she has played me?" And then as his companion's answer failed: "In
+spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no
+sign of her explaining--?"
+
+His hostess raised her head. "She does want to see you, I know; but you
+must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough--when it was you
+who declined to see _her_."
+
+"Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?"--he
+was entirely reminiscent. "What I recall is that even if I had
+condoned--that evening--her deception of _me_ in my folly, I still
+loathed, for my friend's sake, her practical joke on poor John."
+
+Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. "It was your very
+complaint that your own appeal to her _became_ an appeal from herself."
+
+"Yes," he returned, so well he remembered, "she was about as civil to
+me then--picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!--as that
+devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant remarks,
+for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!"
+
+His good friend showily balanced and might have been about to reply with
+weight; but what she in fact brought out was only: "I see you're right
+about it: I must let her speak for herself."
+
+"That I shall greatly prefer to her speaking--as she did so
+extraordinarily, out of the blue, at Dedborough, upon my honour--for the
+wonderful friends she picks up: the picture-man introduced by her (what
+was his name?) who regularly 'cheeked' me, as I suppose he'd call it,
+in my own house, and whom I hope, by the way, that under this roof she's
+not able to be quite so thick with!"
+
+If Lady Sandgate winced at that vain dream she managed not to betray
+it, and she had, in any embarrassment on this matter, the support, as we
+know, of her own tried policy. "She leads her life under this roof
+very much as under yours; and she's not of an age, remember, for me
+to pretend either to watch her movements or to control her contacts."
+Leaving him however thus to perform his pleasure the charming woman had
+before she went an abrupt change of tone. "Whatever your relations with
+others, dear friend, don't forget that _I'm_ still here."
+
+Lord Theign accepted the reminder, though, the circumstances being such,
+it scarce moved him to ecstasy. "That you're here, thank heaven, is of
+course a comfort--or would be if you understood."
+
+"Ah," she submissively sighed, "if I don't always 'understand' a spirit
+so much higher than mine and a situation so much more complicated,
+certainly, I at least always defer, I at least always--well, what can I
+say but worship?" And then as he remained not other than finely passive,
+"The old altar, Theign," she went on--"and a spark of the old fire!"
+
+He had not looked at her on this--it was as if he shrank, with his
+preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left
+hand. "So I feel!" he was, however, kind enough to answer.
+
+"Do feel!" she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand
+to her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich "Good-bye!" reached the
+threshold of the other room.
+
+"May I smoke?" he asked before she had disappeared.
+
+"Dear, yes!"
+
+He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about
+for a match. But something else occurred to him. "You must come to
+Victoria."
+
+"Rather!" she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Left alone he had a moment's meditation where he stood; it found issue
+in an articulate "Poor dear thing!"--an exclamation marked at once with
+patience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which,
+waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed,
+finding matches at last and lighting his cigarette--all with an air
+of concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his
+finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom--if gloom it was--dropped,
+however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene
+through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in
+silence.
+
+"Oh!" he jerked out at sight of her--which she had to content herself
+with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing
+little to qualify its dryness. "I take it for granted that you know
+I'm within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of
+health." And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her
+possession of this fact: "I've thought accordingly that before I go I
+should--on this first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at
+Dedborough--like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my
+absence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me."
+He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness,
+to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly
+passive--possibly indeed a trifle portentous. "If you had plotted and
+planned it in advance," he none the less firmly pursued, "if you had
+acted from some uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn't have arranged
+more perfectly to incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and
+purposes, make light of me and insult me." Even before this charge
+she made no sign; with her eyes now attached to the ground she let him
+proceed. "I had practically guaranteed to our excellent, our charming
+friend, your favourable view of his appeal--which you yourself too,
+remember, had left him in so little doubt of!--so that, having by your
+performance so egregiously failed him, I have the pleasure of their
+coming down on me for explanations, for compensations, and for God knows
+what besides."
+
+Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of
+her attention. "I'm sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong;
+but may I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as 'they'?"
+
+"'They'?" he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to
+his more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he
+has tried to pass. "Why, your own sister to begin with--whose interest
+in what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise;
+and _his_ people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular,
+who only wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, and
+as pleasant and as clever, damn it, when all's said and done, as any
+others that are likely to come your way." It clearly did his lordship
+good to work out thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to
+him and glowed with irresistible colour. "Letting alone gallant John
+himself, most amiable of men, about whose merits and whose claims you
+appear to have pretended to agree with me just that you might, when he
+presumed, poor chap, ardently to urge them, deal him with the more cruel
+effect that calculated blow on the mouth!"
+
+It was clear that in the girl's great gravity embarrassment had no
+share. "They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you're
+obliged to come down on _me?_"
+
+"Assuredly--for some better satisfaction than your just moping here
+without a sign!"
+
+"But a sign of what, father?" she asked--as helpless as a lone islander
+scanning the horizon for a sail.
+
+"Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, the
+predicament into which you've put me!"
+
+"Hasn't it occurred to you in the least that you've rather put _me_ into
+one?"
+
+He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. "I put you certainly
+in the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlement
+in life--which all the elements that would make for your enjoying it
+had every appearance of successfully commending to you." The perfect
+readiness of which on his lips had, like a higher wave, the virtue
+of lifting and dropping him to still more tangible ground. "And if I
+understand you aright as wishing to know whether I apologise for that
+zeal, why you take a most preposterous view of our relation as father
+and daughter."
+
+"You understand me no better than I fear I understand you," Lady Grace
+returned, "if what you expect of me is really to take back my words to
+Lord John." And then as he didn't answer, while their breach gaped like
+a jostled wound, "Have you seriously come to propose--and from _him_
+again," she added--"that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lend
+myself to your beautiful arrangement?"
+
+It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for his
+dignity, not give way to passion. "I've come, above all, for _this_, I
+may say, Grace: to remind you of whom you're addressing when you jibe at
+me, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand--exactly as to whether
+you judged us to have actively _incurred_ your treatment of our unhappy
+friend, to have brought it upon us, he and I, by my refusal to discuss
+with you at such a crisis the question of my disposition of a particular
+item of my property. I've only to look at you, for that matter," Lord
+Theign continued--always with a finer point and a higher consistency as
+his rehearsal of his wrongs broadened--"to have my inquiry, as it seems
+to me, eloquently answered. You flounced away from poor John, you took,
+as he tells me, 'his head off,' just to repay me for what you chose to
+regard as my snub on the score of your challenging my entertainment of
+a possible purchaser; a rebuke launched at me, practically, in the
+presence of a most inferior person, a stranger and an intruder, from
+whom you had all the air of taking your cue for naming me the great
+condition on which you'd gratify my hope. Am I to understand, in other
+words,"--and his lordship mounted to a climax--"that you sent us
+about our business because I failed to gratify _your_ hope: that of my
+knocking under to your sudden monstrous pretension to lay down the law
+for my choice of ways and means of raising, to my best convenience, a
+considerable sum of money? You'll be so good as to understand, once
+for all, that I recognise there no right of interference from any
+quarter--and also to let that knowledge govern your behaviour in my
+absence."
+
+Lady Grace had thus for some minutes waited on his words--waited even as
+almost with anxiety for the safe conduct he might look to from some of
+the more extravagant of them. But he at least felt at the end--if it
+was an end--all he owed them; so that there was nothing for her but to
+accept as achieved his dreadful felicity. "You're very angry with
+me, and I hope you won't feel me simply 'aggravating' if I say that,
+thinking everything over, I've done my best to allow for that. But I
+_can_ answer your question if I do answer it by saying that my discovery
+of your possible sacrifice of one of our most beautiful things didn't
+predispose me to decide in favour of a person--however 'backed' by
+you--for whose benefit the sacrifice was to take place. Frankly," the
+girl pushed on, "I did quite hate, for the moment, everything that might
+make for such a mistake; and took the darkest view, let me also confess,
+of every one, without exception, connected with it I interceded with
+you, earnestly, for our precious picture, and you wouldn't on any terms
+_have_ my intercession. On top of that Lord John blundered in, without
+timeliness or tact--and I'm afraid that, as I hadn't been the least in
+love with him even before, he did have to take the consequence."
+
+Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as all
+he could possibly want. "You recognise then that your reception of him
+_was_ purely vindictive!--the meaning of which is that unless my conduct
+of my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens to
+square with your superior wisdom you'll put me under boycott all round!
+While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charming
+friend's lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand an
+example, what account have you to offer of the scene you made me
+there before that fellow--your confederate, as he had all the air of
+being!--by giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminently
+done with him after his remarkable display, you at least were but the
+more determined to see him keep it up?"
+
+The girl's justification, clearly, was very present to her, and not
+less obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding every
+side-issue, keep it very simple, "The only account I can give you, I
+think, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that I
+felt--well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,
+I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn't do such
+things. I care, if you like, to indiscretion--I care, if you like, to
+offence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you before
+you leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I'm ready to cry out
+to you that you oughtn't, you oughtn't, you oughtn't!"
+
+Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,
+checked her as in an act really of violence--save that, like an inflamed
+young priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her message.
+"Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter--no 'crying out,' if you
+please!" After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still kept her
+lighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a minute,
+inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections, taking,
+as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new strange
+measure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a difference
+of tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had supposed,
+so that the case might really call for some coolness. "You keep bad
+company, Grace--it pays the devil with your sense of proportion. If you
+make this row when I sell a picture, what will be left to you when I
+forge a cheque?"
+
+"If you had arrived at the necessity of forging a cheque," she answered,
+"I should then resign myself to that of your selling a picture."
+
+"But not short of that!"
+
+"Not short of that. Not one of ours."
+
+"But I couldn't," said his lordship with his best and coldest amusement,
+"sell one of somebody else's!"
+
+She was, however, not disconcerted. "Other people do other things--they
+appear to have done them, and to be doing them, all about us. But _we_
+have been so decently different--always and ever. We've never done
+anything disloyal."
+
+"'Disloyal'?"--he was more largely amazed and even interested now.
+
+Lady Grace stuck to her word. "That's what it seems to _me!_"
+
+"It seems to you"--and his sarcasm here was easy--"more disloyal to sell
+a picture than to buy one? Because we didn't paint 'em all ourselves,
+you know!"
+
+She threw up impatient hands. "I don't ask you either to paint or to
+buy----!"
+
+"Oh, _that's_ a mercy!" he interrupted, riding his irony hard; "and
+I'm glad to hear you at least let me off _such_ efforts! However, if it
+strikes you as gracefully filial to apply to your father's conduct so
+invidious a word," he went on less scathingly, "you must take
+from him, in your turn, his quite other view of what makes
+disloyalty--understanding distinctly, by the same token, that he enjoins
+on you not to give an odious illustration of it, while he's away, by
+discussing and deploring with any _one_ of your extraordinary
+friends any aspect or feature whatever of his walk and conversation.
+That--pressed as I am for time," he went on with a glance at his watch
+while she remained silent--"is the main sense of what I have to say to
+you; so that I count on your perfect conformity. When you have told me
+that I _may_ so count"--and casting about for his hat he espied it and
+went to take it up--"I shall more cordially bid you good-bye."
+
+His daughter looked as if she had been for some time expecting the law
+thus imposed upon her--had been seeing where he must come out; but
+in spite of this preparation she made him wait for his reply in such
+tension as he had himself created. "To Kitty I've practically said
+nothing--and she herself can tell you why: I've in fact scarcely seen
+her this fortnight. Putting aside then Amy Sandgate, the only person to
+whom I've spoken--of your 'sacrifice,' as I suppose you'll let me
+call it?--is Mr. Hugh Crimble, whom you talk of as my 'confederate' at
+Dedborough."
+
+Lord Theign recovered the name with relief. "Mr. Hugh Crimble--that's
+it!--whom you so amazingly caused to be present, and apparently invited
+to be active, at a business that so little concerned him."
+
+"He certainly took upon himself to be interested, as I had hoped he
+would. But it was because I had taken upon _my_ self--"
+
+"To act, yes," Lord Theign broke in, "with the grossest want of
+delicacy! Well, it's from that exactly that you'll now forbear;
+and 'interested' as he may be--for which I'm deucedly obliged to
+him!--you'll not speak to Mr. Crimble again."
+
+"Never again?"--the girl put it as for full certitude.
+
+"Never of the question that I thus exclude. You may chatter your fill,"
+said his lordship curtly, "about any others."
+
+"Why, the particular question you forbid," Grace returned with great
+force, but as if saying something very reasonable--"that question is
+_the_ question we care about: it's our very ground of conversation."
+
+"Then," her father decreed, "your conversation will please to _dispense_
+with a ground; or you'll perhaps, better still--if that's the only
+way!--dispense with your conversation."
+
+Lady Grace took a moment as if to examine this more closely. "You
+require of me not to communicate with Mr. Crimble at all?"
+
+"Most assuredly I require it--since it's to that you insist on
+reducing me." He didn't look reduced, the master of Dedborough, as he
+spoke--which was doubtless precisely because he held his head so high
+to affirm what he suffered. "Is it so essential to your comfort," he
+demanded, "to hear him, or to make him, abuse me?"
+
+"'Abusing' you, father dear, has nothing whatever to do with it!"--his
+daughter had fairly lapsed, with a despairing gesture, to the tenderness
+involved in her compassion for his perversity. "We look at the thing in
+a much larger way," she pursued, not heeding that she drew from him
+a sound of scorn for her "larger." "It's of our Treasure itself we
+talk--and of what can be _done_ in such cases; though with a close
+application, I admit, to the case that you embody."
+
+"Ah," Lord Theign asked as with absurd curiosity, "I embody a case?"
+
+"Wonderfully, father--as you do everything; and it's the fact of its
+being exceptional," she explained, "that makes it so difficult to deal
+with."
+
+His lordship had a gape for it. "'To deal with'? You're undertaking to
+'deal' with me?"
+
+She smiled more frankly now, as for a rift in the gloom. "Well, how can
+we help it if you _will_ be a case?" And then as her tone but visibly
+darkened his wonder: "What we've set our hearts on is saving the
+picture."
+
+"What you've set your hearts on, in other words, is working straight
+against me?"
+
+But she persisted without heat. "What we've set our hearts on is working
+for England."
+
+"And pray who in the world's 'England,'" he cried in his stupefaction,
+"unless I am?"
+
+"Dear, dear father," she pleaded, "that's all we _want_ you to be! I
+mean"--she didn't fear firmly to force it home--"in the real, the right,
+the grand sense; the sense that, you see, is so intensely ours."
+
+"'Ours'?"--he couldn't but again throw back her word at her. "Isn't it,
+damn you, just _in_ ours--?"
+
+"No, no," she interrupted--"not in _ours!_" She smiled at him still,
+though it was strained, as if he really ought to perceive.
+
+But he glared as at a senseless juggle. "What and who the devil are you
+talking about? What are 'we,' the whole blest lot of us, pray, but
+the best and most English thing in the country: people walking--and
+riding!--straight; doing, disinterestedly, most of the difficult and all
+the thankless jobs; minding their own business, above all, and expecting
+others to mind theirs?" So he let her "have" the stout sound truth, as
+it were--and so the direct force of it clearly might, by his view, have
+made her reel. "You and I, my lady, and your two decent brothers, God be
+thanked for them, and mine into the bargain, and all the rest, the jolly
+lot of us, take us together--make us numerous enough without any foreign
+aid or mixture: if that's what I understand you to mean!"
+
+"You don't understand me at all--evidently; and above all I see you
+don't want to!" she had the bravery to add, "By 'our' sense of what's
+due to the nation in such a case I mean Mr. Crimble's and mine--and
+nobody's else at all; since, as I tell you, it's only with him I've
+talked."
+
+It gave him then, every inch of him showed, the full, the grotesque
+measure of the scandal he faced. "So that 'you and Mr. Crimble'
+represent the standard, for me, in your opinion, of the proprieties and
+duties of our house?"
+
+Well, she was too earnest--as she clearly wished to let him see--to mind
+his perversion of it. "I express to you the way we feel."
+
+"It's most striking to hear, certainly, what you express"--he
+had positively to laugh for it; "and you speak of him, with your
+insufferable 'we,' as if you were presenting him as your--God knows
+what! You've enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to have
+arrived at such unanimity." And then, as if to fall into no trap he
+might somehow be laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebutted
+nothing: "You must see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be able
+to speak of yourself without him!"
+
+"Yes, we're fellow-critics, father"--she accepted this opening. "I
+perfectly adopt your term." But it took her a minute to go further. "I
+saw Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago."
+
+"Saw him 'here'?" Lord Theign amazedly asked. "He _comes_ to you
+here--and Amy Sandgate has been silent?"
+
+"It wasn't her business to tell you--since, you see, she could leave it
+to me. And I quite expect," Lady Grace then produced, "that he'll come
+again."
+
+It brought down with a bang all her father's authority. "Then I simply
+exact of you that you don't see him."
+
+The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimming
+cup. "Is that what you _really_ meant by your condition just now--that
+when I do see him I shall not speak to him?"
+
+"What I 'really meant' is what I really mean--that you bow to the law I
+lay upon you and drop the man altogether."
+
+"Have nothing to do with him at all?"
+
+"Have nothing to do with him at all."
+
+"In fact"--she took it in--"give him wholly up."
+
+He had an impatient gesture. "You sound as if I asked you to give up
+a fortune!" And then, though she had phrased his idea without
+consternation--verily as if it had been in the balance for her--he
+might have been moved by something that gathered in her eyes. "You're
+so wrapped up in him that the precious sacrifice is like _that_ sort of
+thing?"
+
+Lady Grace took her time--but showed, as her eyes continued to hold him,
+what _had_ gathered. "I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father--I think
+him clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants--I want it, I think,
+really, as much; and I don't at all deny that he has helped to make me
+so want it. But that doesn't matter. I'll wholly cease to see him, I'll
+give him up forever, if--if--!" She faltered, however, she hung fire
+with a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she began
+and stopped again, "If--if--!" while her father caught her up with
+irritation.
+
+"'If,' my lady? If _what_, please?"
+
+"If you'll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender--and never
+make another to any one else!"
+
+He stood staring as at the size of it--then translated it into his own
+terms. "If I'll obligingly announce to the world that I've made an ass
+of myself you'll kindly forbear from your united effort--the charming
+pair of you--to show me up for one?"
+
+Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this,
+simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn't
+till a minute passed that she said: "You don't agree to my compromise?"
+
+Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of his
+spirit. "Good God, I'm to 'compromise' on top of everything?--I'm to
+let you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I'm
+entitled to settle with you as things have ever _been_ settled among us,
+by uttering to you my last parental word?"
+
+"You don't care enough then for what you name?"--she took it up as
+scarce heeding now what he said.
+
+"For putting an end to your odious commerce--? I give you the measure,
+on the contrary," said Lord Theign, "of how much I care: as you give me,
+very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you--!" But
+his other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which he
+broke off in turn as for disgust.
+
+It was with an effect of decently shielding herself--the unuttered
+meaning came so straight--that she substituted words of her own. "Of
+what it costs me to redeem the picture?"
+
+"To lose your tenth-rate friend"--he spoke without scruple now.
+
+She instantly broke into ardent deprecation, pleading at once and
+warning. "Father, father, oh--! You hold the thing in your hands."
+
+He pulled up before her again as to thrust the responsibility straight
+back. "My orders then are so much rubbish to you?"
+
+Lady Grace held her ground, and they remained face to face in opposition
+and accusation, neither making the other the sign of peace. But the girl
+at least _had_, in her way, held out the olive-branch, while Lord Theign
+had but reaffirmed his will. It was for her acceptance of this that he
+searched her, her last word not having yet come. Before it had done so,
+however, the door from the lobby opened and Mr. Gotch had regained
+their presence. This appeared to determine in Lady Grace a view of the
+importance of delay, which she signified to her companion in a "Well--I
+must think!" For the butler positively resounded, and Hugh was there.
+
+"Mr. Crimble!" Mr. Gotch proclaimed--with the further extravagance of
+projecting the visitor straight upon his lordship.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Our young man showed another face than the face his friend had lately
+seen him carry off, and he now turned it distressfully from that source
+of inspiration to Lord Theign, who was flagrantly, even from this first
+moment, no such source at all, and then from his noble adversary back
+again, under pressure of difficulty and effort, to Lady Grace, whom he
+directly addressed. "Here I am again, you see--and I've got my news,
+worse luck!" But his manner to her father was the next instant more
+brisk. "I learned you were here, my lord; but as the case is important I
+told them it was all right and came up. I've been to my club," he
+added for the girl, "and found the tiresome thing--!" But he broke down
+breathless.
+
+"And it isn't good?" she cried with the highest concern.
+
+Ruefully, yet not abjectly, he confessed, "Not so good as I hoped. For I
+assure you, my lord, I counted--"
+
+"It's the report from Pappendick about the picture at Verona," Lady
+Grace interruptingly explained.
+
+Hugh took it up, but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassment
+dismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showing
+thus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any reviving
+possibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. "The man
+I told _you_ about also," he said to his formidable patron; "whom I
+went to Brussels to talk with and who, most kindly, has gone for us to
+Verona. He has been able to get straight at _their_ Mantovano, but the
+brute horribly wires me that he doesn't quite see the thing; see, I
+mean"--and he gathered his two hearers together now in his overflow
+of chagrin, conscious, with his break of the ice, more exclusively of
+that--"my vivid vital point, the absolute screaming identity of the two
+persons represented. I still hold," he persuasively went on, "that
+our man is their man, but Pappendick decides that he isn't--and as
+Pappendick has so _much_ to be reckoned with of course I'm awfully
+abashed."
+
+Lord Theign had remained what he had begun by being, immeasurably and
+inaccessibly detached--only with his curiosity more moved than he
+could help and as, on second thought, to see what sort of a still more
+offensive fool the heated youth would really make of himself. "Yes--you
+seem indeed remarkably abashed!"
+
+Hugh clearly was thrown again, by the cold "cut" of this, colder than
+any mere social ignoring, upon a sense of the damnably poor figure he
+did offer; so that, while he straightened himself and kept a mastery of
+his manner and a control of his reply, we should yet have felt his cheek
+tingle. "I backed my own judgment strongly, I know--and I've got my
+snub. But I don't in the least knock under."
+
+"Only the first authority in Europe doesn't care, I suppose, whether you
+do or not!"
+
+"He isn't _the_ first authority in Europe, thank God," the young man
+returned--"though he is, I admit, one of the three or four first. And
+I mean to appeal--I've another shot in my locker," he went on with his
+rather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. "I had already written, you
+see, to dear old Bardi."
+
+"Bardi of Milan?"--she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the appeal
+of his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament was
+also for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken without
+her father's presence.
+
+It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any one
+to perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. "You know of
+him?--how delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel," he quickly
+explained, "he must have _most_ the instinct--and it has come over me
+since that he'd have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowing
+the Verona picture."
+
+She had fairly hung on his lips. "But does he know ours?"
+
+"No--not ours yet. That is"--he consciously and quickly took himself
+up--"not yours! But as Pap-pendick went to Verona for us I've asked
+Bardi to do us the great favour to come here--if Lord Theign will be so
+good," he said, bethinking himself with a turn, "as to let him examine
+the Moretto." He faced again to the personage he mentioned, who,
+simply standing off and watching, in concentrated interest as well as
+detachment, this interview of his cool daughter and her still cooler
+guest, had plainly "elected," as it were, to give them rope to hang
+themselves. Staring very hard at Hugh he met his appeal, but in a
+silence clearly calculated; against which, however, the young man,
+bearing up, made such head as he could. He offered his next word, that
+is, equally to the two companions. "It's not at all impossible--for such
+curious effects have been!--that the Dedborough picture seen _after_
+the Verona will point a different moral from the Verona seen after the
+Dedborough."
+
+"And so awfully _long_ after--wasn't it?" Lady Grace asked.
+
+"Awfully long after--it was years ago that Pappen-dick, being in this
+country for such purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when none
+of you were there, or at least visible."
+
+"Oh of course we don't see _every one!_"--she heroically kept it up.
+
+"You don't see every one," Hugh bravely laughed, "and that makes it all
+the more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shall
+really get Bardi," he pursued, "to go again to Verona----"
+
+"The last thing before coming here?"--she had guessed before he could
+say it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her for
+assent. "How happy they should like so to work for you!"
+
+"Ah, we're a band of brothers," he returned--"'we few, we happy
+few'--from country to country"; to which he added, gaining more ease for
+an eye at Lord Theign: "though we do have our little rubs and disputes,
+like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping
+_interest_ of it all; since," he developed and explained, for his elder
+friend's benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially
+at least recovered, "when we're really 'hit' over a case we'll do almost
+anything in life."
+
+Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediately
+appropriated what her father let alone. "It must be so lovely to _feel_
+so hit!"
+
+"It does spoil one," Hugh laughed, "for milder joys. Of course what I
+have to consider is the chance--putting it at the _merest_ chance--of
+Bardi's own wet blanket! But that's again so very small--though," he
+pulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as an
+almost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, "you'll retort upon me naturally
+that I promised you the possibility of Pappendick's veto would be: all
+on the poor dear old basis, you'll claim, of the wish father to the
+thought. Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Only
+give me time!" he sublimely insisted.
+
+"How can we prevent your using it?" Lady Grace again interrupted; "or
+the fact either that if the worst comes to the worst--"
+
+"The thing"--he at once pursued--"will always be at the least the
+greatest of Morettos? Ah," he cried so cheerily that there was still a
+freedom in it toward any it might concern, "the worst sha'n't come to
+the worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is that
+supports me in the deep regret I have to express"--and he faced Lord
+Theign again--"for any inconvenience I may have caused you by my
+abortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yet
+more than make up!"
+
+Lord Theign, after the longest but the blankest contemplation of
+him, broke hereupon, for the first time, that attitude of completely
+sustained and separate silence which he had yet made compatible with his
+air of having deeply noted every element of the scene--so that it was of
+this full view his participation had effectively consisted, "I haven't
+the least idea, sir, what you're talking about!" And he squarely turned
+his back, strolling toward the other room, the threshold of which he the
+next moment had passed, remaining scantily within, however, and in
+sight of the others, not to say of ourselves; even though averted and
+ostensibly lost in some scrutiny that might have had for its object the
+great enshrined Lawrence.
+
+There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, the
+richest of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided by
+the width of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then used
+for their own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now over
+Hugh's unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he must
+at once act. Lady Grace's young arms conveyed to him by a despairing
+contrite motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could do
+in his presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to
+leave the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair,
+for their full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged,
+the charged give and take of their gaze and, it might well have
+been imagined, of their passion. Hugh had for an instant a show of
+hesitation--of the arrested impulse, while he kept her father within
+range, to launch at that personage before going some final remonstrance.
+It was the girl's raised hand and gesture of warning that waved away
+for him such a mistake; he decided, under her pressure, and after a last
+searching and answering look at her reached the door and let himself
+out. The stillness was then prolonged a minute by the further wait of
+the two others, Lord Theign where he had been standing and his daughter
+on the spot from which she had not moved. It presently ended in his
+lordship's turn about as if inferring by the silence that the intruder
+had withdrawn.
+
+"Is that young man your lover?" he said as he drew again near.
+
+Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had been
+prepared. "Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short time
+ago demanded of me?"
+
+"It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy
+with him!"
+
+"You mean that if he _should_ be--what you ask me about--your exaction
+would then be modified?"
+
+"My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the
+contrary," Lord Theign pronounced, "rest on an immense new ground.
+Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth."
+
+"Won't the truth be before you, father, if you'll _think_ a
+moment--without extravagance?" After which, while, as stiffly as
+ever--and it probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly--he didn't
+rise to it, she went on: "If I _offered_ you not again to see him, does
+that make for you the appearance--?"
+
+"If you offered it, you mean, on your condition--my promising not to
+sell? I promised," said Lord Theign, "absolutely nothing at all!"
+
+She took him up with all expression. "So I promised as little! But
+that I should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your
+curiosity."
+
+She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see
+_how_ wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. "You risked
+your offer for the great equivalent over which you've so wildly worked
+yourself up."
+
+"Yes, I've worked myself--that, I grant you and don't blush for! But
+hardly so much as to renounce my 'lover'--if," she prodigiously smiled,
+"I were so fortunate as to have one!"
+
+"You renounced poor John mightily easily--whom you were so fortunate as
+to have!"
+
+Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. "Do you call Lord John
+my lover?"
+
+"He was your suitor most assuredly," Lord Theign inimitably said,
+though without looking at her; "and as strikingly encouraged as he was
+respectfully ardent!"
+
+"Encouraged by _you_, dear father, beyond doubt!"
+
+"Encouraged--er--by every one: because you were (yes, you _were!_)
+encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour as
+to whether you didn't, on your honour, turn him off because of your just
+then so stimulated views on the person who has been with us."
+
+Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than she
+could say--moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, by
+other things than harshness: "Oh father, father, father----!"
+
+He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared to
+give way to her sincerity. "Well then if I _have_ your denial I take
+it as answering my whole question--in a manner that satisfies me. If
+there's nothing, on your word, of that sort between you, you can all the
+more drop him."
+
+"But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the other
+case--that of there _being_ something!"
+
+He brushed away her logic-chopping. "If you're so keen then for past
+remarks I take up your own words--I accept your own terms for your
+putting an end to Mr. Crimble." To which, while, turning pale, she said
+nothing, he added: "You recognise that you profess yourself ready----"
+
+"Not again to see him," she now answered, "if you tell me the picture's
+safe? Yes, I recognise that I _was_ ready--as well as how scornfully
+little you then were!"
+
+"Never mind what I then was--the question's of what I actually am, since
+I close with you on it The picture's therefore as safe as you please,"
+Lord Theign pursued, "if you'll do what you just now engaged to."
+
+"I engaged to do nothing," she replied after a pause; and the face she
+turned to him had grown suddenly tragic. "I've no word to take back, for
+none passed between us; but I _won't_ do what I mentioned and what you
+at once laughed at Because," she finished, "the case is different."
+
+"Different?" he almost shouted--"_how_, different?"
+
+She didn't look at him for it, but she was none the less strongly
+distinct "He has _been_ here--and that has done it He knows," she
+admirably emphasised.
+
+"Knows what I think of him, no doubt--for a brazen young prevaricator!
+But what else?"
+
+She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. "What he will have
+seen--that I feel we're too good friends."
+
+"Then your denial of it's false," her father fairly thundered--"and you
+_are_ infatuated?"
+
+It made her the more quiet. "I like him very much."
+
+"So that your row about the picture," he demanded with passion, "has
+been all a blind?" And then as her quietness still held her: "And his a
+blind as much--to help him to get _at_ you?"
+
+She looked at him again now. "He must speak for himself. I've said what
+I mean."
+
+"But what the devil _do_ you mean?" Lord Theign, taking in the hour, had
+reached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense of
+time lamentably lost.
+
+Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and,
+hurried and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand a
+minute. Then she let everything go. "Do what you like with the picture!"
+
+He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at his
+face, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done with her
+now and immediately lost to sight. Left alone she stood a moment looking
+before her; then with a vague advance, held apparently by a quickly
+growing sense of the implication of her act, reached a table where she
+remained a little, deep afresh in thought--only the next thing to fall
+into a chair close to it and there, with her elbows on it, yield to the
+impulse of covering her flushed face with her hands.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THIRD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+HUGH CRIMBLE waited again in the Bruton Street drawing-room--this time
+at the afternoon hour; he restlessly shifted his place, looked at things
+about him without seeing them; all he saw, all he outwardly studied,
+was his own face and figure as he stopped an instant before a long glass
+suspended between two windows. Just as he turned from that brief and
+perhaps not wholly gratified inspection Lady Grace--that he had sent
+up his name to whom was immediately apparent--presented herself at
+the entrance from the other room. These young persons had hereupon no
+instant exchange of words; their exchange was mute--they but paused
+where they were; while the silence of each evidently tested the other
+for full confidence. A measure of this comfort came first, it would have
+appeared, to Hugh; though he then at once asked for confirmation of it.
+
+"Am I right, Lady Grace, am I right?--to have _come_, I mean, after so
+many days of not hearing, not knowing, and perhaps, all too stupidly,
+not trying." And he went on as, still with her eyes on him, she didn't
+speak; though, only, we should have guessed, from her stress of emotion.
+"Even if I'm wrong, let me tell you, I don't care--simply because,
+whatever new difficulty I may have brought about for you here a
+fortnight ago, there's something that to-day adds to my doubt and my
+fear too great a pang, and that has made me feel I can scarce bear the
+suspense of them as they are."
+
+The girl came nearer, and if her grave face expressed a pity it yet
+declined a dread. "Of what suspense do you speak? Your still being
+without the other opinion--?"
+
+"Ah, that worries me, yes; and all the more, at this hour, as I say,
+that--" He dropped it, however: "I'll tell you in a moment! My _real_
+torment, all the while, has been not to know, from day to day, what
+situation, what complication that last scene of ours with your father
+here has let you in for; and yet at the same time--having no sign nor
+sound from you!--to see the importance of not making anything possibly
+worse by approaching you again, however discreetly. I've been in the
+dark," he pursued, "and feeling that I must leave _you_ there; so that
+now--just brutally turning up once more under personal need and at any
+cost--I don't know whether I most want or most fear what I may learn
+from you."
+
+Lady Grace, listening and watching, appeared to choose between different
+ways of meeting this appeal; she had a pacifying, postponing gesture,
+marked with a beautiful authority, a sign of the value for her of what
+she gave precedence to and which waved off everything else. "Have you
+had--first of all--any news yet of Bardi?"
+
+"That I have is what has driven me straight _at_ you again--since I've
+shown you before how I turn to you at a crisis. He has come as I hoped
+and like a regular good 'un," Hugh was able to state; "I've just met
+him at the station, but I pick him up again, at his hotel in Clifford
+Street, at five. He stopped, on his way from Dover this morning, to my
+extreme exasperation, to 'sample' Canterbury, and I leave him to a
+bath and a change and tea. Then swooping down I whirl him round to Bond
+Street, where his very first apprehension of the thing (an apprehension,
+oh I guarantee you, so quick and clean and fine and wise) will be the
+flash-light projected--well," said the young man, to wind up handsomely,
+but briefly and reasonably, "over the whole field of our question."
+
+She panted with comprehension. "That of the two portraits being but the
+one sitter!"
+
+"That of the two portraits being but the one sitter. With everything so
+to the good, more and more, that bangs in, up to the head, the golden
+nail of authenticity, and"--he quite glowed through his gloom for
+it--"we take our stand in glory on the last Mantovano in the world."
+
+It was a presumption his friend visibly yearned for--but over which,
+too, with her eyes away from him, she still distinguished the shadow of
+a cloud. "That is if the flash-light comes!"
+
+"That is if it comes indeed, confound it!"--he had to enlarge a little
+under the recall of past experience. "So now, at any rate, you see my
+tension!"
+
+She looked at him again as with a vision too full for a waste of words.
+"While you on your side of course keep well in view Mr. Bender's."
+
+"Yes, while I keep well in view Mr. Bender's; though he doesn't know,
+you see, of Bardi's being at hand."
+
+"Still," said the girl, always all lucid for the case, "if the
+'flash-light' does presently break----!"
+
+"It will first take him in the eye?" Hugh had jumped to her idea, but he
+adopted it only to provide: "It might if he didn't now wear goggles, so
+to say!--clapped on him too hard by Pappendick's so damnably perverse
+opinion." With which, however, he quickly bethought himself. "Ah, of
+course, these wretched days, you haven't known of Pappendick's personal
+visit. After that wire from Verona I wired him back defiance--"
+
+"And that brought him?" she cried.
+
+"To do the honest thing, yes--I _will_ say for him: to renew, for full
+assurance, his early memory of our picture."
+
+She hung upon it. "But only to stick then to what he had telegraphed?"
+
+"To declare that for _him_, lackaday! our thing's a pure Moretto--and
+to declare as much, moreover, with all the weight of his authority, to
+Bender himself, who of course made a point of seeing him."
+
+"So that Bender"--she followed and wondered--"is, as a consequence,
+wholly off?"
+
+It made her friend's humour play up in his acute-ness. "Bender,
+Lady Grace, is, by the law of his being, never 'wholly' off--or
+on!--anything. He lives, like the moon, in mid-air, shedding his silver
+light on earth; never quite gone, yet never _all_ there--save for
+inappreciable moments. He _would_ be in eclipse as a peril, I grant,"
+Hugh went on--"if the question had struck him as really closed. But
+luckily the blessed Press--which is a pure heavenly joy and now quite
+immense on it--keeps it open as wide as Piccadilly."
+
+"Which makes, however," Lady Grace discriminated, "for the danger of a
+grab."
+
+"Ah, but all the more for the shame of a surrender! Of course I admit
+that when it's a question of a life spent, like his, in waiting,
+acquisitively, for the cat to jump, the only thing for one, at a given
+moment, as against that signal, is to be found one's self by the animal
+in the line of its trajectory. That's exactly," he laughed, "where we
+are!"
+
+She cast about as intelligently to note the place. "Your great idea, you
+mean, _has_ so worked--with the uproar truly as loud as it has seemed to
+come to us here?"
+
+"All beyond my wildest hope," Hugh returned; "since the sight of the
+picture, flocked to every day by thousands, so beautifully _tells_. That
+we must at any cost keep it, that the nation must, and hang on to it
+tight, is the cry that fills the air--to the tune of ten letters a day
+in the Papers, with every three days a gorgeous leader; to say nothing
+of more and more passionate talk all over the place, some of it awfully
+wild, but all of it wind in our sails."
+
+"I suppose it was that wind then that blew me round there to see the
+thing in its new light," Lady Grace said. "But I couldn't stay--for
+tears!"
+
+"Ah," Hugh insisted on his side for comfort, "we'll crow loudest yet!
+And don't meanwhile, just _don't_, those splendid strange eyes of the
+fellow seem consciously to plead? The women, bless them, adore him,
+cling to him, and there's talk of a 'Ladies' League of Protest'--all of
+which keeps up the pitch."
+
+"Poor Amy and I are a ladies' league," the girl joylessly joked--"as we
+now take in the 'Journal' regardless of expense."
+
+"Oh then you practically _have_ it all--since," Hugh, added after
+a brief hesitation, "I suppose Lord Theign himself doesn't languish
+uninformed."
+
+"At far-off Salsomaggiore--by the papers? No doubt indeed he isn't
+spared even the worst," said Lady Grace--"and no doubt too it's a drag
+on his cure."
+
+Her companion seemed struck with her lack of assurance. "Then you
+don't--if I may ask--hear from him?"
+
+"I? Never a word."
+
+"He doesn't write?" Hugh allowed himself to insist.
+
+"He doesn't write. And I don't write either."
+
+"And Lady Sandgate?" Hugh once more ventured.
+
+"Doesn't _she_ write?"
+
+"Doesn't _she_ hear?" said the young man, treating the other form of the
+question as a shade evasive.
+
+"I've asked her not to tell me," his friend replied--"that is if he
+simply holds out."
+
+"So that as she doesn't tell you"--Hugh was clear for the inference--"he
+of course does hold out." To which he added almost accusingly while his
+eyes searched her: "But your case is really bad."
+
+She confessed to it after a moment, but as if vaguely enjoying it. "My
+case is really bad."
+
+He had a vividness of impatience and contrition. 197
+
+"And it's I who--all too blunderingly!--have made it so?"
+
+"I've made it so myself," she said with a high head-shake, "and you, on
+the contrary--!" But here she checked her emphasis.
+
+"Ah, I've so _wanted_, through our horrid silence, to help you!" And he
+pressed to get more at the truth. "You've so quite fatally displeased
+him?"
+
+"To the last point--as I tell you. But it's not to that I refer," she
+explained; "it's to the ground of complaint I've given _you_." And then
+as this but left him blank, "It's time--it was at once time--that you
+should know," she pursued; "and yet if it's hard for me to speak, as you
+see, it was impossible for me to write. But there it is." She made her
+sad and beautiful effort. "The last thing before he left us I let the
+picture go."
+
+"You mean--?" But he could only wonder--till, however, it glimmered upon
+him. "You gave up your protest?"
+
+"I gave up my protest. I told him that--so far as I'm concerned!--he
+might do as he liked."
+
+Her poor friend turned pale at the sharp little shock of it; but if his
+face thus showed the pang of too great a surprise he yet wreathed the
+convulsion in a gay grimace. "You leave me to struggle alone?"
+
+"I leave you to struggle alone."
+
+He took it in bewilderingly, but tried again, even to the heroic,
+for optimism. "Ah well, you decided, I suppose, on some new personal
+ground."
+
+"Yes; a reason came up, a reason I hadn't to that extent looked for
+and which of a sudden--quickly, before he went--I _had_ somehow to deal
+with. So to give him my word in the dismal sense I mention was my only
+way to meet the strain." She paused; Hugh waited for something further,
+and "I gave him my word I wouldn't help you," she wound up.
+
+He turned it over. "To _act_ in the matter--I see."
+
+"To act in the matter"--she went through with it--"after the high stand
+I had taken."
+
+Still he studied it. "I see--I see. It's between you and your father."
+
+"It's between him and me--yes. An engagement not again to trouble him."
+
+Hugh, from his face, might have feared a still greater complication; so
+he made, as he would probably have said, a jolly lot of this. "Ah, that
+was nice of you. And natural. _That's_ all right!"
+
+"No"--she spoke from a deeper depth--"it's altogether wrong. For
+whatever happens I must now accept it."
+
+"Well, say you must"--he really declined not to treat it almost as
+rather a "lark"--"if we can at least go on talking."
+
+"Ah, we _can_ at least go on talking!" she perversely sighed. "I can say
+anything I like so long as I don't say it to _him_" she almost wailed.
+But she added with more firmness: "I can still hope--and I can still
+pray."
+
+He set free again with a joyous gesture all his confidence. "Well, what
+more _could_ you do, anyhow? So isn't that enough?"
+
+It took her a moment to say, and even then she didn't. "Is it enough for
+_you_, Mr. Crimble?"
+
+"What _is_ enough for me"--he could for his part readily name it--"is
+the harm done you at our last meeting by my irruption; so that if you
+got his consent to see me----!"
+
+"I didn't get his consent!"--she had turned away from the searching
+eyes, but she faced them again to rectify: "I see you against his
+express command."
+
+"Ah then thank God I came!"--it was like a bland breath on a _feu de
+joie_: he flamed so much higher.
+
+"Thank God you've come, yes--for my deplorable exposure." And to justify
+her name for it before he could protest, "I _offered_ him here not to
+see you," she rigorously explained.
+
+"'Offered him?"--Hugh did drop for it. "Not to see me--ever again?"
+
+She didn't falter. "Never again."
+
+Ah then he understood. "But he wouldn't let that serve----?"
+
+"Not for the price I put on it."
+
+"His yielding on the picture?"
+
+"His yielding on the picture."
+
+Hugh lingered before it all. "Your proposal wasn't 'good enough'?"
+
+"It wasn't good enough."
+
+"I see," he repeated--"I see." But he was in that light again mystified.
+"Then why are you therefore not free?"
+
+"Because--just after--you came back, and I _did_ see you again!"
+
+Ah, it was all present. "You found you were too sorry for me?"
+
+"I found I was too sorry for you--as he himself found I was."
+
+Hugh had got hold of it now. "And _that_, you mean, he couldn't
+stomach?"
+
+"So little that when you had gone (and _how_ you had to go you remember)
+he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a way so
+different from his own----"
+
+"To do all we want of him?"
+
+"To do all I did at least."
+
+"And it was _then_," he took in, "that you wouldn't deal?"
+
+"Well"--try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came
+straighter and straighter now--"those moments had brought you home to
+me as they had also brought _him_; making such a difference, I felt, for
+what he veered round to agree to."
+
+"The difference"--Hugh wanted it so adorably definite--"that you didn't
+see your way to accepting----?"
+
+"No, not to accepting the condition he named."
+
+"Which was that he'd keep the picture for you if you'd treat me as too
+'low'----?"
+
+"If I'd treat you," said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young
+face, "as impossible."
+
+He kept her eyes--he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. "And
+not even for the sake of the picture--?" After he had given her time,
+however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish
+him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told
+him didn't make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He _had_ it, and
+let her see by his high flush how he made it his own--while, the next
+thing, as it was but part of her avowal, the rest of that illumination
+called for a different intelligence. "Your father's reprobation of me
+personally is on the ground that you're all such great people?"
+
+She spared him the invidious answer to this as, a moment before, his
+eagerness had spared her reserve; she flung over the "ground" that his
+question laid bare the light veil of an evasion, "'Great people,' I've
+learned to see, mustn't--to remain great--do what my father's doing."
+
+"It's indeed on the theory of their not so behaving," Hugh returned,
+"that we see them--all the inferior rest of us--in the grand glamour of
+their greatness!"
+
+If he had spoken to meet her admirable frankness half-way, that beauty
+in her almost brushed him aside to make at a single step the rest of the
+journey. "You won't see them in it for long--if they don't now, under
+such tests and with such opportunities, begin to take care."
+
+This had given him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the
+closer criticism. "Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth,
+but 'takes care,' with the least trouble to himself and the finest short
+cut--does it, if you'll let me say so, rather on the cheap--by finding
+'the likes' of me, as his daughter's trusted friend, out of the
+question."
+
+"Well, you won't mind that, will you?" Lady Grace asked, "if he finds
+his daughter herself, in any such relation to you, quite as much so."
+
+"Different enough, from position to position and person to person," he
+brightly brooded, "is the view that gets itself _most_ comfortably taken
+of the implications of Honour!"
+
+"Yes," the girl returned; "my father, in the act of despoiling us
+all, all who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant
+consciousness, keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine,
+so delicate sense, by suddenly discovering that he's scandalised at my
+caring for your friendship."
+
+Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession
+promised and only waiting--or as if from that moment forth he had her
+assurance of everything that most concerned him and that might
+most inspire. "Well, isn't the moral of it all simply that what his
+perversity of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us
+is to bring us--and to keep us--blessedly together?"
+
+She seemed for a moment to question his "simply." "Do you regard us as
+so much 'together' when you remember where, in spite of everything, I've
+put myself?"
+
+"By telling him to do what he likes?" he recalled without embarrassment.
+"Oh, that wasn't in spite of 'everything'--it was only in spite of the
+Manto-vano."
+
+"'Only'?" she flushed--"when I've given the picture up?"
+
+"Ah," Hugh cried, "I don't care a hang for the picture!" And then as she
+let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands:
+"We both only care, don't we, that we're given to each other thus? We
+both only care, don't we, that nothing can keep us apart?"
+
+"Oh, if you've forgiven me--!" she sighed into his fond face.
+
+"Why, since you gave the thing up _for_ me," he pleadingly laughed, "it
+isn't as if you had given _me_ up----!"
+
+"For anything, anything? Ah never, never!" she breathed.
+
+"Then why aren't we all right?"
+
+"Well, if you will----!"
+
+"Oh for ever and ever and ever!"--and with this ardent cry of his
+devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his
+breast and to his lips.
+
+The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning "Amy
+Sandgate!"--as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room. Lady
+Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them--their disjunction had
+scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer threshold. They
+had at once put the widest space possible between them--a little of
+the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch at
+composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one side
+and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a few
+moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of;
+from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt
+and responsible address to Hugh. "Mustn't you go without more delay to
+Clifford Street?"
+
+He came back to it all alert "At once!" He had recovered his hat and
+reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder
+lady. "Please pardon me"--and he disappeared.
+
+Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the
+girl. "Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father's suddenly
+at hand?"
+
+"He has come back?"--Lady Grace was sharply struck.
+
+"He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to
+Kitty--according to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back
+late from my luncheon. He has returned with a rush--as," said his
+correspondent in the elation of triumph, "I was _sure_ he would!"
+
+Her young friend was more at sea. "Brought back, you mean, by the
+outcry--even though he so hates it?"
+
+But she was more and more all lucidity--save in so far as she was now
+almost all authority. "Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come
+back to face the music!"
+
+Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which
+the music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to
+a positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride.
+"Yes--that's dear old father!"
+
+And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject?
+"At the point the row has reached he couldn't stand it another day; so
+he has thrown up his cure and--lest we should oppose him!--not even
+announced his start."
+
+"Well," her companion returned, "now that I've _done_ it all I shall
+never oppose him again!"
+
+Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she
+might have received on entering. "He'll only oppose _you!_"
+
+"If he does," said Lady Grace, "we're at present two to bear it."
+
+"Heaven save us then"--the elder woman was quick, was even cordial, for
+the sense of this--"your good friend _is_ clever!"
+
+Lady Grace honoured the remark. "Mr. Crim-ble's remarkably clever."
+
+"And you've arranged----?"
+
+"We haven't arranged--but we've understood. So that, dear Amy, if _you_
+understand--!" Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the hall.
+
+"His lordship has arrived?" his mistress immediately put to him.
+
+"No, my lady, but Lord John has--to know if he's expected _here_, and in
+that case, by your ladyship's leave, to come up."
+
+Her ladyship turned to the girl. "May Lord John--as we do await your
+father--come up?"
+
+"As suits _you_, please!"
+
+"He may come up," said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. "His lordship's
+expected." She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went
+on to her companion: "You asked me just now if I understood. Well--I do
+understand!"
+
+Lady Grace, with Gotch's withdrawal, which left the door open, had
+reached the passage to the other room. "Then you'll excuse me!"--she
+made her escape.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter and
+quite waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of his
+eagerness and tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. "What
+on earth then do you suppose he has come back to _do_--?" To which he
+added while his hostess's gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture:
+"Because when a fellow really finds himself the centre of a
+cyclone----!"
+
+"Isn't it just at the centre," she interrupted, "that you keep
+remarkably still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I
+count on dear Theign's doing nothing in the least foolish--!"
+
+"Ah, but he can't have chucked everything for nothing," Lord John
+sharply returned; "and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can't
+not meet somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a great
+nobleman and good citizen."
+
+"It's his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the
+scapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!" Lady
+Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
+
+"Yes," Lord John concluded for her, "the mercenary millions on whose
+traffic in their trumpery values--when they're so lucky as to have
+any!--_this_ isn't a patch!"
+
+"Oh, there are cases _and_ cases: situations and responsibilities so
+intensely differ!"--that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the
+moral to be gathered.
+
+"Of course everything differs, all round, from everything," Lord John
+went on; "and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the
+victim of circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest
+motives, to be literally torn to pieces?"
+
+"Well," said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshly
+consulted her bracelet watch, "I hope he isn't already torn--if you tell
+me you've been to Kitty's."
+
+"Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again," the
+young man explained, "as Lady Imber hadn't been at home."
+
+"Ah cool Kitty!" his hostess sighed again--but diverted, as she spoke,
+by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding Lord
+Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb
+of travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearning
+tenderness and compassionate curiosity. "At last, dearest friend--what a
+joy! But with Kitty not at home to receive you?"
+
+That young woman's parent made light of it for the indulged creature's
+sake. "Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty."
+To which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord
+John: "But Bender, who came there before my arrival--he hasn't tried for
+me here?"
+
+It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive.
+"I met him at the club at luncheon; he had had your letter--but for
+which chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You'll see him
+all right at this house; but I'm glad, if I may say so, Theign," the
+speaker pursued with some emphasis--"I'm glad, you know, to get hold of
+you first."
+
+Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but his
+other companion's apprehension had already overflowed. "You haven't come
+back, have you--to whatever it may be!--for _trouble_ of any sort with
+Breckenridge?"
+
+His lordship transferred his penetration to this fair friend, "Have
+you become so intensely absorbed--these remarkable days!--in
+'Breckenridge'?"
+
+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 Lord John--"three extraordinarily vulgar pages about the egregious
+Pap-pendick!"
+
+"About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, as
+Breckenridge says, marked the picture down?"--the young man was clearly
+all-knowing. "That _has_ of course weighed on Bender--being confirmed
+apparently, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion."
+
+Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some of
+his friend's terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the
+babbler or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. "He too
+has known me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of 'the drift of
+public opinion'!" After which he quite charged at his vain informant.
+"Am I to tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of public
+opinion?--which is but another name for the chatter of all the fools one
+doesn't know, in addition to all those (and plenty of 'em!) one damnably
+does."
+
+Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse.
+"Ah, you did _that_, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!"
+
+"I don't speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on
+_you_," Lord John importantly explained--"but in the light of its effect
+on Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he _is_ to have it,
+to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last for anything
+but the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been."
+
+Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication,
+betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptly
+restored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action.
+"Well, isn't a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?"
+
+It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. "A fine old
+Moretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough--for its
+comparative, strictly comparative, insignificance; and he only thought
+of the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity--"
+
+"That that mendacious young cad who has bamboozled Grace," Lord Theign
+broke in, "tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claiming
+for it?"
+
+Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. "Ah, the knowing people
+haven't had their last word--the possible Mantovano isn't exploded
+_yet!_" Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. "I've
+had enough of the knowing people--the knowing people are serpents! My
+picture's to take or to leave--and it's what I've come back, if you
+please, John, to say to your man to his face."
+
+This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as the
+successive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smoke
+cleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing and smiling.
+"Yes, why in mercy's name can't he choose _which?_--and why does he
+write him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome argumentative letters?"
+
+Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had been
+working in him rather vehemently, though under due caution too, as a
+consequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively watched
+his elder. "I don't think I quite see _how_, my dear Theign, the poor
+chap's letter was so offensive."
+
+In that case his dear Theign could tell him. "Because it was a tissue
+of expressions that may pass current--over counters and in awful
+newspapers--in _his_ extraordinary world or country, but that I decline
+to take time to puzzle out here."
+
+"If he didn't make himself understood," Lord John took leave to laugh,
+"it must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender."
+
+"Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his
+turns, haven't a notion," Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety,
+"of what he's talking about."
+
+"I think I never miss his weird sense," her younger guest again loyally
+contended--"and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!"
+
+"I happen to like nothing that I don't enjoy," Lord Theign rejoined with
+some asperity--"and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my
+part an interest in his expenditure of purchase-money that I neither
+feel nor pretend to. He doesn't want--by what I spell out--the picture
+he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want--if one reads it so--the
+picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with great
+emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two 'articles' (the
+greatest of Morettos an 'article'!) haven't been 'by now' proved
+different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove them!"
+
+Lord John indulged in a pause--but also in a suggestion. "He must
+allude to your hoping--when you allowed us to place the picture with
+Mackintosh--that it would show to all London in the most precious light
+conceivable."
+
+"Well, if it hasn't so shown"--and Lord Theign stared as if
+mystified--"what in the world's the meaning of this preposterous
+racket?"
+
+"The racket is largely," his young friend explained, "the vociferation
+of the people who contradict each other about it."
+
+On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question.
+"Some--yes--shouting on the housetops that's a Mantovano of the
+Mantovanos, and others shrieking back at them that they're donkeys if
+not criminals."
+
+"He may take it for whatever he likes," said Lord Theign, heedless of
+these contributions, "he may father it on Michael Angelo himself if
+he'll but clear out with it and let me alone!"
+
+"What he'd _like_ to take it for," Lord John at this point saw his way
+to remark, "is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand."
+
+"A Hundred Thousand?" cried his astonished friend.
+
+"Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand"--the young man enjoyed clearly
+handling even by the lips so round a sum.
+
+Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility any appearance of having
+gaped. "Why, haven't you yet realised, Theign, that those are the
+American figures?"
+
+His lordship looked at her fixedly and then did the same by Lord John,
+after which he waited a little. "I've nothing to do with the American
+figures--which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite intolerably
+vulgar."
+
+"Well, I'd be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!" Lady
+Sandgate hastened to proclaim.
+
+"Didn't he let us know at Dedborough," Lord John asked of the master of
+that seat, "that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?"
+
+"I've heard him remark myself," said their companion, rising to the
+monstrous memory, "that he wouldn't take a cheap picture--even though a
+'handsome' one--as a present."
+
+"And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?" the
+proprietor of the work demanded.
+
+Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience. "All he wants to
+do, don't you see? is to prevent your _making_ it one!"
+
+Lord Theign glared at this imputation to him of a low ductility. "I
+offered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy of it--and of _me_."
+
+"My dear reckless friend," his young adviser protested, "you named no
+figure _at all_ when it came to the point----!"
+
+"It _didn't_ come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I put
+a Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly"--Lord Theign accepted the
+reminding gesture--"on which a rich American had an eye and in which he
+had, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and so we left
+it--parting each of us ready but neither of us bound."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Bender's bound, as he'd say," Lady Sand-gate
+interposed--"'bound' to make you swallow the enormous luscious plum that
+your appetite so morbidly rejects!"
+
+"My appetite, as morbid as you like"--her old friend had shrewdly turned
+on her--"is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in enormities I
+warn him to carry them elsewhere!"
+
+Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated at the absurdity
+of him. "But how can't you see that it's only a plum, as she says, for
+a plum and an eye for an eye--since the picture itself, with this huge
+ventilation, is now quite a different affair?"
+
+"How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himself
+confesses is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants,
+there's no really established ground for treating it as anything but
+the same?" On which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shook
+himself free again, in his high petulance, and moved restlessly to where
+the passage to the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; all
+moreover to the effect of suggesting to us that something still other
+than what he had said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneath
+that quantity. The spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time,
+in uncertainty and with a mute but associated comment on the perversity
+and oddity he had so suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug of
+almost bored despair and Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact for
+their action by a finger flourished to her lips, and in fact at once
+proceeding to apply these arts. The subject of her attention had still
+remained as in worried thought; he had even mechanically taken up a book
+from a table--which he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
+
+"You're so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer," she began--"and
+unless you stick to _that_ you might as well have done nothing. What
+you call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly
+what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to
+be _allowed_ to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers
+haven't settled anything for those who know--though which of the elect
+themselves after all _does_ seem to know?--it's a great service rendered
+him to have started such a hare to run!"
+
+Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. "Certainly
+his connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end for
+his glory."
+
+It didn't, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least
+made his indifference flash with derision. "His 'glory'--Mr. Bender's
+glory? Why, they quite universally loathe him--judging by the stuff they
+print!"
+
+"Oh, here--as a corrupter of our morals and a promoter of our decay,
+even though so many are flat on their faces to him--yes! But it's
+another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand
+steam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest:
+_there_ he'll be, if you'll only let him, the biggest thing going; since
+sound, in that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts.
+If he said of the thing, as you recognise," Lord John went on, "'It's
+going to be a Mantovano,' why you can bet your life that it _is_--that
+it has _got_ to be some kind of a one."
+
+His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would
+have been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair--worked up
+to something quite openly wilful and passionate. "No kind of a furious
+flaunting one, under _my_ patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The
+Dedborough picture in the market--owing to horrid little circumstances
+that regard myself alone--is the Dedborough picture at a decent,
+sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which
+I beg you will take as my last word on the subject."
+
+Lord John, trying whether he _could_ take it, momentarily mingled his
+hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless
+look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only
+reassert himself. "May I nevertheless reply that I think you'll not be
+able to prevent _anything?_--since the discussed object will completely
+escape your control in New York!"
+
+"And almost any discussed object"--Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion
+also--"is in New York, by what one hears, easily _worth_ a Hundred
+Thousand!"
+
+Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. "I sell the man a
+Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent
+swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?"
+
+"Well"--Lord John was but briefly baffled--"when the picture's his you
+can't help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!"
+
+"Then it isn't his yet," the elder man retorted--"and I promise you
+never will be if he has _sent_ you to me with his big drum!"
+
+Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as
+if the case were now really beyond them. "Yes, how indeed can it ever
+_become_ his if Theign simply won't let him pay for it?"
+
+Her question was unanswerable. "It's the first time in all my life I've
+known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening
+_not_ to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!"
+
+"Theign is unable to take it in," her ladyship explained, "that--as I've
+heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type--Bender simply
+can't _afford_ not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer who
+ever lived."
+
+"Ah, cited and celebrated at my _expense_--say it at once and have it
+over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!"
+
+"The dear man's inimitable--at his 'expense'!" It was more than Lord
+John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence
+and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
+
+"Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean," Lord Theign
+asseverated--"at the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour
+by my own standards. There you perfectly _are_ about the man, and it's
+precisely what I say--that he's to hustle and harry me _because_ he's a
+money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand,
+when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource at
+Dedborough. I didn't put my property on view that _he_ might blow about
+it------!"
+
+"No, if you like it," Lady Sandgate returned; "but you certainly didn't
+so arrange"--she seemed to think her point somehow would help--"that
+you might blow about it yourself!"
+
+"Nobody wants to 'blow,'" Lord John more stoutly interposed, "either hot
+or cold, I take it; but I really don't see the harm of Bender's liking
+to be known for the scale of his transactions--actual or merely imputed
+even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent."
+
+Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. "The only
+question perhaps is why he doesn't try for some precious work that
+somebody--less delicious than dear Theign--_can_ be persuaded on bended
+knees to accept a hundred thousand for."
+
+"'Try' for one?"--her younger visitor took it up while her elder more
+attentively watched him. "That was exactly what he did try for when he
+pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua."
+
+"Oh well, he mustn't come back to _that_--must he, Theign?" her ladyship
+cooed.
+
+That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious
+apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed
+himself. "Besides which there _are_ no things of that magnitude knocking
+about, don't you know?--they've _got_ to be worked up first if they're
+to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind," he
+continued to his noble monitor, "an agreement on some such basis as
+_this_?--that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you'll
+squeamishly consent to take, if it's at the same time the smallest he'll
+squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him
+free----"
+
+Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion
+only waited. "Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum
+taken as practically one and the same?"
+
+"Ah, you know," Lord John discriminated, "he doesn't 'talk' so much
+himself--there's really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It's
+the rate at which--by the very way he's 'fixed': an awful way indeed, I
+grant you!--a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at his heels, are
+always talking for him and of him."
+
+Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that
+had been slowly gathering force. "_You_ talk for him, my dear chap,
+pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assured
+of a commission on the job--on a fine ascending scale! Has he put you
+up to that proposition, eh? _Do_ you get a handsome percentage and _are_
+you to make a good thing of it?"
+
+The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry--whether from a
+good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise
+showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch.
+"As he's to come to you himself--and I don't know why the mischief he
+doesn't come!--he will answer you that graceful question."
+
+"Will he answer it," Lord Theign asked, "with the veracity that
+the suggestion you've just made on his behalf represents him as so
+beautifully adhering to?" On which he again quite fiercely turned his
+back and recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a
+blanker dismay.
+
+Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. "I don't see why
+you should speak as if I were urging some abomination."
+
+"Then I'll tell you why!"--and Lord Theign was upon him again for the
+purpose. "Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright and
+for good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the
+interest of such equivocations!"
+
+Lady Sandgate's dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently
+in turn to her amusement. "'Give it away,' my dear friend, to a man who
+only longs to smother you in gold?"
+
+Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. "Give it
+away--just for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter--to some
+cause as unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender's power of sound and
+his splendid reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the
+Thingumbob, to the Nation!"
+
+Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and
+stupefied. "Ah, my dear creature, you've flights of extravagance----!"
+
+"One thing's very certain," Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued--"that
+the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my
+nerves, more and more every minute that I'm conscious of it; so that,
+hang it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn't I, for my relief, do again,
+damme, _what I like_?--that is bang the door in their faces, have the
+show immediately stopped?" He turned with the attraction of this idea
+from one of his listeners to the other. "It's _my_ show--it isn't
+Bender's, surely!--and I can do just as I choose with it."
+
+"Ah, but isn't that the very point?"--and Lady Sandgate put it to Lord
+John. "Isn't it Bender's show much more than his?"
+
+Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of
+disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly--while Lord Theign, on
+the other hand, followed up his happy thought. "Then if it's Bender's
+show, or if he claims it is, there's all the more reason!" And it took
+his lordship's inspiration no longer to flower. "See here, John--do
+this: go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to
+shut straight down!"
+
+"'Shut straight down'?" the young man abhorrently echoed.
+
+"Stop it _to-night_--wind it up and end it: see?" The more the
+entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly
+took on for him. "Have the picture removed from view and the incident
+closed."
+
+"You seriously ask _that_ of me!" poor Lord John quavered.
+
+"Why in the world shouldn't I? It's a jolly lot less than you asked of
+me a month ago at Dedborough."
+
+"What then am I to say to them?" Lord John spoke but after a long
+moment, during which he had only looked hard and--an observer might even
+then have felt--ominously at his taskmaster.
+
+That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. "Say
+anything that comes into your clever head. I don't really see that
+there's anything else _for_ you!" Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger,
+who gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
+
+The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; then
+he eyed his friend significantly--almost portentously. "Those are
+absolutely your sentiments?"
+
+"Those are absolutely my sentiments"--and Lord Theign brought this out
+as with the force of a physical push.
+
+"Very well then!" But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly
+sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the
+extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. "Not one more day?"
+
+Lord Theign only waved him away. "Not one more hour!"
+
+He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme
+protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the
+two pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance,
+he clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed on
+his mission.
+
+
+
+
+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 thought--he wondered; and then as if fairly amused at
+himself: "Hanged if I know what _is_ my own price!" After which he went
+for his hat. "But there's one thing," he remembered as he came back with
+it: "where's my too, _too_ unnatural daughter?"
+
+"If you mean Grace and really want her I'll send and find out."
+
+"Not now"--he bethought himself. "But does she _see_ that chatterbox?"
+
+"Mr. Crimble? Yes, she sees him."
+
+He kept his eyes on her. "Then how far has it gone?"
+
+Lady Sandgate overcame an embarrassment. "Well, not even yet, I think,
+so far as they'd like."
+
+"They'd 'like'--heaven save the mark!--to marry?"
+
+"I suspect them of it. What line, if it should come to that," she asked,
+"would you then take?"
+
+He was perfectly prompt. "The line that for Grace it's simply ignoble."
+
+The force of her deprecation of such language was qualified by tact.
+"Ah, darling, as dreadful as _that?_"
+
+He could but view the possibility with dark resentment. "It lets us so
+down--from what we've always been and done; so down, down, down that I'm
+amazed you don't feel it!"
+
+"Oh, I feel there's still plenty to keep you up!" she soothingly
+laughed.
+
+He seemed to consider this vague amount--which he apparently judged,
+however, not so vast as to provide for the whole yearning of his nature.
+"Well, my dear," he thus more blandly professed, "I shall need all the
+extra _agrement_ that your affection can supply."
+
+If nothing could have been, on this, richer response, nothing could
+at the same time have bee more pleasing than her modesty. "Ah, my
+affectionate Theign, is, as I think you know, a fountain always in
+flood; but in any more worldly element than that--as you've ever seen
+for yourself--a poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not
+'great' as they used so finely to call it! You _are_--with the natural
+sense of greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man
+doing and taking things."
+
+He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for
+the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. "If you mean that I hold
+up my head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much
+longer possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the
+name of goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them,
+and is it really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her
+license and a specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I'm in
+danger of helplessly to swallow the dose?"
+
+"Do you find Mr. Crimble," Lady Sandgate as if there might really be
+something to say, "so utterly out of the question?"
+
+"I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree
+offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one's poor dear
+decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would
+forbid _that_ kind of relation."
+
+What kind of relation, if any, Hugh's deficiencies might still render
+thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of
+Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether assured
+sound of "Mr. Breckenridge Bender." The guest in possession gave a cry
+of impatience, but Lady Sandgate said "Coming up?"
+
+"If his lordship will see him."
+
+"Oh, he's beyond his time," his lordship pronounced--"I can't see him
+now!"
+
+"Ah, but _mustn't_ you--and mayn't _I_ then?" She waited, however, for
+no response to signify to her servant "Let him come," and her companion
+could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he wondered
+at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a little
+that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. "Does the kind of relation
+you'd be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down, as you
+say, more than the relation you've been having with Mr. Bender?"
+
+Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. "Do you mean
+don't I hate 'em equally both?"
+
+She cut his further reply short, however, by a "Hush!" of warning--Mr.
+Bender was there and his introducer had left them.
+
+Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon
+little to ceremony. "I've but a moment, to my regret, to give you, Mr.
+Bender, and if you've been unavoidably detained, as you great bustling
+people are so apt to be, it will perhaps still be soon enough for
+your comfort to hear from me that I've just given order to close our
+exhibition. From the present hour on, sir"--he put it with the firmness
+required to settle the futility of an appeal.
+
+Mr. Bender's large surprise lost itself, however, promptly enough,
+in Mr. Bender's larger ease. "Why, do you really mean it, Lord
+Theign?--removing already from view a work that gives innocent
+gratification to thousands?"
+
+"Well," said his lordship curtly, "if thousands have seen it I've done
+what I wanted, and if they've been gratified I'm content--and invite
+_you_ to be."
+
+Mr. Bender showed more keenness for this richer implication. "In other
+words it's I who may remove the picture?"
+
+"Well--if you'll take it on my estimate."
+
+"But what, Lord Theign, all this time," Mr. Bender almost pathetically
+pleaded, "_is_ your estimate?"
+
+The parting guest had another pause, which prolonged itself, after
+he had reached the door, in a deep solicitation of their hostess's
+conscious eyes. This brief passage apparently inspired his answer. "Lady
+Sandgate will tell you." The door closed behind him.
+
+The charming woman smiled then at her other friend, whose comprehensive
+presence appeared now to demand of her some account of these strange
+proceedings. "He means that your own valuation is much too shockingly
+high."
+
+"But how can I know _how_ much unless I find out what he'll take?"
+The great collector's spirit had, in spite of its volume, clearly not
+reached its limit of expansion. "Is he crazily waiting for the thing to
+be proved _not_ what Mr. Crimble claims?"
+
+"No, he's waiting for nothing--since he holds that claim demolished by
+Pappendick's tremendous negative, which you wrote to tell him of."
+
+Vast, undeveloped and suddenly grave, Mr. Bender's countenance showed
+like a barren tract under a black cloud. "I wrote to _report_, fair and
+square, on Pap-pendick, but to tell him I'd take the picture just the
+same, negative and all."
+
+"Ah, but take it in that way not for what it is but for what it isn't."
+
+"We know nothing about what it 'isn't,'" said Mr. Bender, "after all
+that has happened--we've only learned a little better every day what it
+is."
+
+"You mean," his companion asked, "the biggest bone of artistic
+contention----?"
+
+"Yes,"--he took it from her--"the biggest that has been thrown into the
+arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for _that_."
+
+Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance;
+it was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.
+"Well, if it's the biggest bone I won't touch it; I'll leave it to be
+mauled by my betters. But since his lordship has asked me to name a
+price, dear Mr. Bender, I'll name one--and as you prefer big prices I'll
+try to make it suit you. Only it won't be for the portrait of a person
+nobody is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my
+great-grandmother."
+
+"Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!"--and her visitor turned from her with the
+hunch of overcharged shoulders.
+
+But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such
+a conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. "You've
+been delivered into my hands--too charmingly; and you won't really
+pretend that you don't recognise that and in fact rather like it."
+
+He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness
+unparalleled--though indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the
+question of whether he had been artfully practised upon; an indifference
+to bad debts or peculation like that of some huge hotel or other
+business involving a margin for waste. He could afford, he could work
+waste too, clearly--and what was it, that term, you might have felt him
+ask, but a mean measure, anyway? quite as the "artful," opposed to his
+larger game, would be the hiding and pouncing of children at play. "Do
+I gather that those uncanny words of his were just meant to put me
+off?" he inquired. And then as she but boldly and smilingly shrugged,
+repudiating responsibility, "Look here, Lady Sandgate, ain't you
+honestly going to help me?" he pursued.
+
+This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. "Mr. Bender,
+Mr. Bender, I'll help you if you'll help _me!_"
+
+"You'll really get me something from him to go on with?"
+
+"I'll get you something from him to go on with."
+
+"That's all I ask--to get _that_. Then I can move the way I want. But
+without it I'm held up."
+
+"You shall have it," she replied, "if I in turn may look to _you_ for a
+trifle on account."
+
+"Well," he dryly gloomed at her, "what do you call a trifle?"
+
+"I mean"--she waited but an instant--"what you would feel as one."
+
+"That won't do. You haven't the least idea, Lady Sandgate," he earnestly
+said, "_how_ I feel at these foolish times. I've never got used to them
+yet."
+
+"Ah, don't you understand," she pressed, "that if I give you an
+advantage I'm completely at your mercy?"
+
+"Well, what mercy," he groaned, "do you deserve?"
+
+She waited a little, brightly composed--then she indicated her inner
+shrine, the whereabouts of her precious picture. "Go and look at her
+again and you'll see."
+
+His protest was large, but so, after a moment, was his compliance--his
+heavy advance upon the other room, from just within the doorway of which
+the great Lawrence was serenely visible. Mr. Bender gave it his eyes
+once more--though after the fashion verily of a man for whom it had now
+no freshness of a glamour, no shade of a secret; then he came back to
+his hostess. "Do you call giving me an advantage squeezing me by your
+sweet modesty for less than I may possibly bear?"
+
+"How can I say fairer," she returned, "than that, with my backing about
+the other picture, which I've passed you my word for, thrown in, I'll
+resign myself to whatever you may be disposed--characteristically!--to
+give for this one."
+
+"If it's a question of resignation," said Mr. Bender, "you mean of
+course what I may be disposed--characteristically!--_not_ to give."
+
+She played on him for an instant all her radiance. "Yes then, you dear
+sharp rich thing!"
+
+"And you take in, I assume," he pursued, "that I'm just going to lean on
+you, for what I want, with the full weight of a determined man."
+
+"Well," she laughed, "I promise you I'll thoroughly obey the direction
+of your pressure."
+
+"All right then!" And he stopped before her, in his unrest, monumentally
+pledged, yet still more massively immeasurable. "How'll you have it?"
+
+She bristled as with all the possible beautiful choices; then she shed
+her selection as a heaving fruit-tree might have dropped some round
+ripeness. It was for her friend to pick up his plum and his privilege.
+"Will you write a cheque?"
+
+"Yes, if you want it right away." To which, however, he added, clapping
+vainly a breast-pocket: "But my cheque-book's down in my car."
+
+"At the door?" She scarce required his assent to touch a bell. "I can
+easily send for it." And she threw off while they waited: "It's so sweet
+your 'flying round' with your cheque-book!"
+
+He put it with promptitude another way. "It flies round pretty well with
+_Mr_----!"
+
+"Mr. Bender's cheque-book--in his car," she went on to Gotch, who had
+answered her summons.
+
+The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: "You'll find
+in the pocket a large red morocco case."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Gotch--but with another word for his mistress.
+"Lord John would like to know--"
+
+"Lord John's there?" she interrupted.
+
+Gotch turned to the open door. "Here he is, my lady."
+
+She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender's eye, to the
+complication involved in his lordship's presence. "It's he who went
+round to Bond Street."
+
+Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. "To stop the show?" And then
+as the young man was already there: "You've stopped the show?"
+
+"It's 'on' more than ever!" Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a
+hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the
+backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. "But Theign should
+be here!"--he addressed her excitedly. "I announce you a call from the
+Prince."
+
+"The Prince?"--she gasped as for the burden of the honour. "He follows
+you?"
+
+Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking,
+recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of associational
+advantage and auspicious possibility. "Is the Prince _after_ the thing?"
+
+Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing
+but his message. "He was there with Mackintosh--to see and admire the
+picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!--and
+did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh
+in his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our noble friend
+and of which, embarrassed though I doubtless was," the young man pursued
+to Lady Sandgate, "I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so
+delighted with it that he declared they mustn't think then of taking the
+thing off, but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it's
+worth, and he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and
+explain him his reasons."
+
+Their hostess cast about for a sign. "Why Theign is at Kitty's, worse
+luck! The Prince calls on him _here?_"
+
+"He calls, you see, on _you_, my lady--at five-forty-five; and
+graciously desired me so to put it you."
+
+"He's very kind, but"--she took in her condition--"I'm not even
+_dressed!_"
+
+"You'll have time"--the young man was a comfort--"while I rush to
+Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender--though it's so near--if I just
+bag your car."
+
+"That's, that's it, take his car!"--Lady Sandgate almost swept him away.
+
+"You may use my car all right," Mr. Bender contributed--"but what I want
+to know is what the man's _after_."
+
+"The man? what man?" his friend scarce paused to ask.
+
+"The Prince then--if you allow he _is_ a man! Is he after my picture?"
+
+Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. "If you'll wait, my dear fellow,
+you'll see."
+
+"Oh why should he 'wait'?" burst from their cautious companion--only
+to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious
+revolution. "Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender--I won't give you up for
+any Prince!" With which she appealed again to Lord John. "He wants to
+'congratulate'?"
+
+"On Theign's decision, as I've told you--which I announced to
+Mackintosh, by Theign's extraordinary order, under his Highness's nose,
+and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot."
+
+Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick
+perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the
+Prince's interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their
+actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. "The
+decision to remove the picture?"
+
+Lord John also observed a discretion. "He wouldn't hear of such a
+thing--says it must stay stock still. So there you are!"
+
+This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a
+clamorous, series of questions. "But _where_ are we, and what has the
+Prince to do with Lord Theign's decision when that's all _I'm_ here for?
+What in thunder _is_ Lord Theign's decision--what was his 'extraordinary
+order'?"
+
+Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this
+solicitor as he had already been put off. "Lady Sandgate, _you_ tell
+him! I rush!"
+
+Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. "What the
+h---- then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what
+'sentiments' did he report round there that Lord Theign had been
+expressing?"
+
+His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to
+recognise the subject of his curiosity--for fear of other recognitions.
+"They put everything on _me_, my dear man--but I haven't the least
+idea."
+
+He looked at her askance. "Then why does the fellow say you have?"
+
+Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. "Because the
+fellow's so agog that he doesn't know _what_ he says!" In addition
+to which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on
+a salver the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called
+attention.
+
+"The large red morocco case."
+
+Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. "Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on
+my desk," she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again
+before she resumed to her visitor: "Mightn't we conclude before he
+comes?"
+
+"The Prince?" Mr. Bender's imagination had strayed from the ground to
+which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps.
+"Will _he_ want your great-grandmother?"
+
+"Well, he may when he sees her!" Lady Sandgate laughed. "And Theign,
+when he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every
+information. Shall I fish it out for you?" she encouragingly asked,
+beside him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her
+persuasive guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him,
+opening out the gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but
+to help himself. "What enormous cheques! _You_ can never draw one for
+two-pound-ten!"
+
+"That's exactly what you deserve I _should_ do!" He remained after this
+solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with ceremonies;
+in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held out to
+him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they might
+have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.
+
+He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before
+him on the table, coming away with a brave gay "Well, I leave it to
+you!" She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance
+for many minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the
+recurrent Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.
+
+"Mr. Crimble, please--for Lady Grace."
+
+"Mr. Crimble _again?_"--she took it discomposedly.
+
+It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. "Mr.
+Crimble? Why he's just the man I want to see!"
+
+Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. "Here he is,
+my lady."
+
+"Then tell her ladyship."
+
+"She has come down," said Gotch while Hugh arrived and his companion
+withdrew, and while Lady Grace, reaching the scene from the other
+quarter, emerged in bright equipment--in her hat, scarf and gloves.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+These young persons were thus at once confronted across the room, and
+the girl explained her preparation. "I was listening hard--for your
+knock and your voice."
+
+"Then know that, thank God, it's all right!"--Hugh was breathless,
+jubilant, radiant.
+
+"A Mantovano?" she delightedly cried.
+
+"A Mantovano!" he proudly gave back.
+
+"A Mantovano!"--it carried even Lady Sandgate away.
+
+"A Mantovano--a sure thing?" Mr. Bender jumped up from his business, all
+gaping attention to Hugh.
+
+"I've just left our blest Bardi," said that young man--"who hasn't the
+shadow of a doubt and is delighted to publish it everywhere."
+
+"Will he publish it right here to _me?_" Mr. Bender hungrily asked.
+
+"Well," Hugh smiled, "you can try him."
+
+"But try him how, where?" The great collector, straining to instant
+action, cast about for his hat "Where _is_ he, hey?"
+
+"Don't you wish I'd tell you?" Hugh, in his personal elation, almost
+cynically answered.
+
+"Won't you wait for the Prince?" Lady Sandgate had meanwhile asked of
+her friend; but had turned more inspectingly to Lady Grace before he
+could reply. "My dear child--though you're lovely!--are you sure you're
+ready for him?"
+
+"For the Prince!"--the girl was vague. "Is he coming?"
+
+"At five-forty-five." With which she consulted her bracelet watch, but
+only at once to wail for alarm. "Ah, it _is_ that, and I'm not dressed!"
+She hurried off through the other room.
+
+Mr. Bender, quite accepting her retreat, addressed himself again
+unabashed to Hugh: "It's your blest Bardi I want first--I'll take the
+Prince after."
+
+The young man clearly could afford indulgence now. "Then I left him at
+Long's Hotel."
+
+"Why, right near! I'll come back." And Mr. Bender's flight was on the
+wings of optimism.
+
+But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. "Why does the
+Prince come, and what in the world's happening?"
+
+"My father has suddenly returned--it may have to do with that."
+
+The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. "Mayn't
+it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?"
+
+"I don't know--and I think I don't care. I don't care," she said, "so
+long as you're right and as the greatest light of all declares you are."
+
+"He _is_ the greatest"--Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: "I could
+see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature! There,
+_before_ the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for those
+great moments, practically to ourselves--without Macintosh to take in
+what was happening or any one else at all to speak of--it was but a
+matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and _I_ had conquered."
+
+"Naturally you had!"--the girl hung on him for it; "and what was
+happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear
+divination, one of the divinations of genius--with every creature all
+these ages so stupid--you were being baptized on the spot a great man."
+
+"Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn't think
+_he's_ one: that that eminent judge couldn't, even with such a leg up,
+rise to my level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,"
+Hugh went on in his gladness, "what for _us_ has most particularly and
+preciously taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career--"
+
+"Your reputation," she cried, "blazes out and your fortune's made?"
+
+He did a happy violence to his modesty. "Well, Bardi adores intelligence
+and takes off his hat to me."
+
+"Then you need take off yours to nobody!"--such was Lady Grace's proud
+opinion. "But I should like to take off mine to _him_," she added;
+"which I seem to have put on--to get out and away with you--expressly
+for that."
+
+Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. "Ah, we'll go forth
+together to him then--thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!--and
+you'll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me."
+
+His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. "The only thing is
+that our awful American----!"
+
+But he warned her with a raised hand. "Not to speak of our awful
+Briton!"
+
+For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign,
+unattended, who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled
+up and held them a minute in reprehensive view--all at least till Hugh
+undauntedly, indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.
+
+"Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it's because I've a
+small, but precious document to deliver you, if you'll allow me to do
+so; which I feel it important myself to place in your hand." He drew
+from his breast a pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed
+envelope; retaining the latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while
+Lord Theign only opposed to this demonstration an unmitigated blankness.
+He went none the less bravely on. "I mentioned to you the last time we
+somewhat infelicitously met that I intended to appeal to another and
+probably more closely qualified artistic authority on the subject of
+your so-called Moretto; and I in fact saw the picture half an hour ago
+with Bardi of Milan, who, there in presence of it, did absolute, did
+ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the claim I've been making. I then
+went with him to his hotel, close at hand, where he dashed me off this
+brief and rapid, but quite conclusive, Declaration, which, if you'll be
+so good as to read it, will enable you perhaps to join us in regarding
+the vexed question as settled."
+
+His lordship, having faced this speech without a sign, rested on the
+speaker a somewhat more confessed intelligence, then looked hard at
+the offered note and hard at the floor--all to avert himself actively
+afterward and, with his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance,
+as it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on
+his attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his
+companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His
+daughter none the less lifted her voice. "If you won't take what he has
+for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?" And then as
+after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, "It may be
+so long again," she said, "before you've a chance to do a thing I ask."
+
+"The chance will depend on yourself!" he returned with high dry
+emphasis. But he held out his hand for the note Hugh had given her and
+with which she approached him; and though face to face they seemed more
+separated than brought near by this contact without commerce. She turned
+away on one side when he had taken the missive, as Hugh had turned away
+on the other; Lord Theign drew forth the contents of the envelope and
+broodingly and inexpressively read the few lines; after which, as having
+done justice to their sense, he thrust the paper forth again till his
+daughter became aware and received it. She restored it to her friend
+while her father dandled off anew, but coming round this time, almost as
+by a circuit of the room, and meeting Hugh, who took advantage of it to
+repeat by a frank gesture his offer of Bardi's attestation. Lord Theign
+passed with the young man on this a couple of mute minutes of the same
+order as those he had passed with Lady Grace in the same connection;
+their eyes dealt deeply with their eyes--but to the effect of his
+lordship's accepting the gift, which after another minute he had slipped
+into his breast-pocket. It was not till then that he brought out a curt
+but resonant "Thank you!" While the others awaited his further pleasure
+he again bethought himself--then he addressed Lady Grace. "I must let
+Mr. Bender know----"
+
+"Mr. Bender," Hugh interposed, "does know. He's at the present moment
+with the author of that note at Long's Hotel."
+
+"Then I must now write him"--and his lordship, while he spoke and from
+where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.
+
+"Will you write _there?_"--and his daughter indicated Lady Sandgate's
+desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.
+
+Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his
+view on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so
+tiresome a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and
+had reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display
+of some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp "Hallo!"
+
+"You don't find things?" Lady Grace asked--as remote from him in one
+quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.
+
+"On the contrary!" he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any
+further surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an
+envelope, which he addressed and brought away.
+
+"If you like," said Hugh urbanely, "I'll carry him that myself."
+
+"But how do you know what it consists of?"
+
+"I don't know. But I risk it."
+
+His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner--he
+even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the
+finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself
+of any measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the
+interesting object, to redeem his offer of service. "Then you'll learn,"
+he simply said.
+
+"And may _I_ learn?" asked Lady Grace.
+
+"You?" The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.
+
+"May I go _with_ him?"
+
+Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme
+bitterness--a nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were
+familiar, but before which their first movement was always tightly to
+close. "_With_ me, my lord," said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined
+they should open and intensifying the emphasis.
+
+He had his effect, and Lord Theign's answer, addressed to Lady Grace,
+made indifference very comprehensive. "You may do what ever you
+dreadfully like!"
+
+At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as
+absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open
+for her.
+
+Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her
+expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have
+preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could
+yet find inspiration too in the very difficulty and the old faiths
+themselves that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth
+and beauty in her serious young face--as it had indeed a force that,
+not indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for
+longer exposure to. His shift of his attitude before she went out was
+fairly an evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter's
+made him afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a
+fear of the other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace passes from
+us at any rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale
+concentration--leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on
+the door.
+
+"You thanked me just now for Bardi's opinion after all," Hugh said with
+a smile; "and it seems to me that--after all as well--I've grounds for
+thanking you!" On which he left his benefactor alone.
+
+"Tit for tat!" There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the
+young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served
+his turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to
+the piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it
+again the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally
+recognise as Mr. Bender's forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising
+value he now studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing
+from him an articulate "What in damnation--?" His speculation dropped
+before the return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room
+fell upon his ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque
+into his waistcoat.
+
+Lady Sandgate appeared now in due--that is in the most happily
+adjusted--splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter
+and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, "Tea will be
+downstairs," she said. "But you're alone?"
+
+"I've just parted," her friend replied, "with Grace and Mr. Crimble."
+
+"'Parted' with them?"--the ambiguity struck her.
+
+"Well, they've gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!"
+
+"You speak," she laughed, "as if it were too gross--I They're surely
+coming back?"
+
+"Back to you, if you like--but not to me."
+
+"Ah, what are you and I," she tenderly argued, "but one and the same
+quantity? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in--well,
+whatever they're doing," she cheerfully added, "you'll get beautifully
+used to it."
+
+"That's just what I'm afraid of--what such horrid matters make of one!"
+
+"At the worst then, you see"--she maintained her optimism--"the
+recipient of royal attentions!"
+
+"Oh," said her companion, whom his honour seemed to leave comparatively
+cold, "it's simply as if the gracious Personage were coming to condole!"
+
+Impatient of the lapse of time, in any case, she assured herself again
+of the hour. "Well, if he only does come!"
+
+"John--the wretch!" Lord Theign returned--"will take care of that: he
+has nailed him and will bring him."
+
+"What was it then," his friend found occasion in the particular tone of
+this reference to demand, "what was it that, when you sent him off, John
+spoke of you in Bond Street as specifically intending?"
+
+Oh he saw it now all lucidly--if not rather luridly--and thereby
+the more tragically. "He described me in his nasty rage as
+consistently--well, heroic!"
+
+"His rage"--she pieced it sympathetically out--"at your destroying his
+cherished credit with Bender?"
+
+Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of
+it. "I had come between him and some profit that he doesn't confess to,
+but that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he
+caught the chance, to the Prince--and the People!"
+
+She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception
+of it. "By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People
+the picture--?"
+
+"As a sacrifice--yes!--to morbid, though respectable scruples." To which
+he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene: "But I
+hope you've nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?"
+
+Lady Sandgate waited--then boldly took her line. "None whatever! You had
+reacted against Bender--but you hadn't gone so far as _that!_"
+
+He had it now all vividly before him. "I had reacted--like a gentleman;
+but it didn't thereby follow that I acted--or spoke--like a demagogue;
+and my mind's a complete blank on the subject of my having done so."
+
+"So that there only flushes through your conscience," she suggested,
+"the fact that he has forced your hand?"
+
+Fevered with the sore sense of it his lordship wiped his brow. "He has
+played me, for spite, his damned impertinent trick!"
+
+She found but after a minute--for it wasn't easy--the right word, or the
+least wrong, for the situation. "Well, even if he did so diabolically
+commit you, you still don't want--do you?--to back out?"
+
+Resenting the suggestion, which restored all his nobler form, Lord
+Theign fairly drew himself up. "When did I ever in all my life back
+out?"
+
+"Never, never in all your life of course!"--she dashed a bucketful at
+the flare. "And the picture after all----!"
+
+"The picture after all"--he took her up in cold grim gallant
+despair--"has just been pronounced definitely priceless." And then
+to meet her gaping ignorance: "By Mr. Crimble's latest and apparently
+greatest adviser, who strongly stamps it a Mantovano and whose practical
+affidavit I now possess."
+
+Poor Lady Sandgate gaped but the more--she wondered and yearned.
+"Definitely priceless?"
+
+"Definitely priceless." After which he took from its place of lurking,
+considerately unfolding it, the goodly slip he had removed from her
+blotting-book. "Worth even more therefore than what Bender so blatantly
+offers."
+
+Her attention fell with interest, from the distance at which she
+stood, on this confirmatory document, her recognition of which was not
+immediate. "And is that the affidavit?"
+
+"This is a cheque to your order, my lady, for ten thousand pounds."
+
+"Ten thousand?"--she echoed it with a shout.
+
+"Drawn by some hand unknown," he went on quietly.
+
+"Unknown?"--again, in her muffled joy, she let it sound out.
+
+"Which I found there at your desk a moment ago, and thought best, in
+your interest, to rescue from accident or neglect; even though it be,
+save for the single stroke of a name begun," he wound up with his look
+like a playing searchlight, "unhappily unsigned."
+
+"Unsigned?"--the exhibition of her design, of her defeat, kept shaking
+her. "Then it isn't good--?"
+
+"It's a Barmecide feast, my dear!"--he had still, her kind friend, his
+note of grimness and also his penetration of eye. "But who is it writes
+you colossal cheques?"
+
+"And then leaves them lying about?" Her case was so bad that you
+would have seen how she felt she must _do_ something--something quite
+splendid. She recovered herself, she faced the situation with all her
+bright bravery of expression and aspect; conscious, you might have
+guessed, that she had never more strikingly embodied, on such lines, the
+elegant, the beautiful and the true. "Why, who can it have been but poor
+Breckenridge too?"
+
+"'Breckenridge'--?" Lord Theign had _his_ smart echoes. "What in the
+world does he owe you money for?"
+
+It took her but an instant more--she performed the great repudiation
+quite as she might be prepared to sweep, in the Presence impending,
+her grandest curtsey. "_Not_, you sweet suspicious thing, for my
+great-grandmother!" And then as his glare didn't fade: "Bender makes my
+life a burden--for the love of my precious Lawrence."
+
+"Which you're weakly letting him grab?"--nothing could have been
+finer with this than Lord Theign's reprobation unless it had been his
+surprise.
+
+She shook her head as in bland compassion for such an idea. "It isn't
+a payment, you goose--it's a bribe! I've withstood him, these trying
+weeks, as a rock the tempest; but he wrote that and left it there, the
+fiend, to tempt me--to corrupt me!"
+
+"Without putting his name?"--her companion again turned over the cheque.
+
+She bethought herself, clearly with all her genius, as to this anomaly,
+and the light of reality broke. "He must have been interrupted in the
+artful act--he sprang up with such a bound at Mr. Crimble's news. At
+once then--for his interest in it--he hurried off, leaving the cheque
+forgotten and unfinished." She smiled more intensely, her eyes attached,
+as from fascination, to the morsel of paper still handled by her friend.
+"But of course on his next visit he'll _add_ his great signature."
+
+"The devil he will!"--and Lord Theign, with the highest spirit, tore the
+crisp token into several pieces, which fluttered, as worthless now as
+pure snowflakes, to the floor.
+
+"Ay, ay, ay!"--it drew from her a wail of which the character, for its
+sharp inconsequence, was yet comic.
+
+This renewed his stare at her. "Do _you_ want to back out? I mean from
+your noble stand."
+
+As quickly, however, she had saved herself. "I'd rather do even what
+you're doing--offer my treasure to the Thingumbob!"
+
+He was touched by this even to sympathy. "Will you then _join_ me in
+setting the example of a great donation------?"
+
+"To the What-do-you-call-it?" she extravagantly smiled.
+
+"I call it," he said with dignity, "the 'National Gallery.'"
+
+She closed her eyes as with a failure of breath. "Ah my dear friend--!"
+
+"It would convince me," he went on, insistent and persuasive.
+
+"Of the sincerity of my affection?"--she drew nearer to him.
+
+"It would comfort me"--he was satisfied with his own expression. Yet
+in a moment, when she had come all rustlingly and fragrantly close, "It
+would captivate me," he handsomely added.
+
+"It would captivate you?" It was for _her_, we should have seen, to be
+satisfied with his expression; and, with our more informed observation
+of all it was a question of her giving up, she would have struck us as
+subtly bargaining.
+
+He gallantly amplified. "It would peculiarly--by which I mean it would
+so naturally--unite us!"
+
+Well, that was all she wanted. "Then for a complete union with you--of
+fact as well as of fond fancy!" she smiled--"there's nothing, even to my
+one ewe lamb, I'm not ready to surrender."
+
+"Ah, we don't surrender," he urged--"we enjoy!"
+
+"Yes," she understood: "with the glory of our grand gift thrown in."
+
+"We quite swagger," he gravely observed--"though even swaggering would
+after this be dull without you."
+
+"Oh, I'll _swagger_ with you!" she cried as if it quite settled and made
+up for everything; and then impatiently, as she beheld Lord John, whom
+the door had burst open to admit: "The Prince?"
+
+"The Prince!"--the young man launched it as a call to arms.
+
+They had fallen apart on the irruption, the pair discovered, but she
+flashed straight at her lover: "Then we can swagger now!"
+
+Lord Theign had reached the open door. "I meet him below."
+
+Demurring, debating, however, she stayed him a moment. "But oughtn't
+I--in my own house?"
+
+His lordship caught her meaning. "You mean he may think--?" But he as
+easily pronounced. "He shall think the Truth!" And with a kiss of his
+hand to her he was gone.
+
+Lord John, who had gazed in some wonder at these demonstrations, was
+quickly about to follow, but she checked him with an authority she
+had never before used and which was clearly the next moment to prove
+irresistible. "Lord John, be so good as to stop." Looking about at the
+condition of a room on the point of receiving so august a character,
+she observed on the floor the fragments of the torn cheque, to which she
+sharply pointed. "And please pick up that litter!"
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #21969 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21969)
diff --git a/old/21969-h.htm.2021-01-25 b/old/21969-h.htm.2021-01-25
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Outcry, by Henry James
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Outcry, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Outcry
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21969]
+Last Updated: September 20, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OUTCRY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE OUTCRY
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Henry James <br /> <br /> <br /> 1911
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> BOOK FIRST </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> BOOK SECOND </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> BOOK THIRD </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK FIRST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;NO, my lord,&rdquo; Banks had replied, &ldquo;no stranger has yet arrived. But I&rsquo;ll
+      see if any one has come in&mdash;or who has.&rdquo; As he spoke, however, he
+      observed Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s approach to the hall by the entrance giving upon
+      the great terrace, and addressed her on her passing the threshold. &ldquo;Lord
+      John, my lady.&rdquo; With which, his duty majestically performed, he retired to
+      the quarter&mdash;that of the main access to the spacious centre of the
+      house&mdash;from which he had ushered the visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This personage, facing Lady Sandgate as she paused there a moment framed
+      by the large doorway to the outer expanses, the small pinkish paper of a
+      folded telegram in her hand, had partly before him, as an immediate
+      effect, the high wide interior, still breathing the quiet air and the fair
+      pannelled security of the couple of hushed and stored centuries, in which
+      certain of the reputed treasures of Dedborough Place beautifully disposed
+      themselves; and then, through ample apertures and beyond the stately stone
+      outworks of the great seated and supported house&mdash;uplifting terrace,
+      balanced, balustraded steps and containing basins where splash and spray
+      were at rest&mdash;all the rich composed extension of garden and lawn and
+      park. An ancient, an assured elegance seemed to reign; pictures and
+      preserved &ldquo;pieces,&rdquo; cabinets and tapestries, spoke, each for itself, of
+      fine selection and high distinction; while the originals of the old
+      portraits, in more or less deserved salience, hung over the happy scene as
+      the sworn members of a great guild might have sat, on the beautiful April
+      day, at one of their annual feasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman of
+      considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided with
+      that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such complacent
+      company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists and turns of
+      history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue or easy
+      sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no point more
+      so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane future
+      certain to be more and more offensive to women of real quality and of
+      formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue to the antique
+      confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, had given way to
+      curiosity&mdash;that is to speculation&mdash;however disguised. She might
+      have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid, but she
+      would presumably have confessed, if put on her trial for restlessness or
+      for intelligence, that she <i>was</i>, after all, almost clever enough to
+      be vulgar. Unmistakably, moreover, she had still, with her fine stature,
+      her disciplined figure, her cherished complexion, her bright important
+      hair, her kind bold eyes and her large constant smile, the degree of
+      beauty that might pretend to put every other question by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John addressed her as with a significant manner that he might have
+      had&mdash;that of a lack of need, or even of interest, for any explanation
+      about herself: it would have been clear that he was apt to discriminate
+      with sharpness among possible claims on his attention. &ldquo;I luckily find <i>you</i>
+      at least, Lady Sandgate&mdash;they tell me Theign&rsquo;s off somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She replied as with the general habit, on her side, of bland reassurance;
+      it mostly had easier consequences&mdash;for herself&mdash;than the perhaps
+      more showy creation of alarm. &ldquo;Only off in the park&mdash;open to-day for
+      a school-feast from Dedborough, as you may have made out from the avenue;
+      giving good advice, at the top of his lungs, to four hundred and fifty
+      children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such a scene, and such an aspect of the personage so accounted for,
+      as Lord John could easily take in, and his recognition familiarly smiled.
+      &ldquo;Oh he&rsquo;s so great on such occasions that I&rsquo;m sorry to be missing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve <i>had</i> to miss it,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate sighed&mdash;&ldquo;that is to miss
+      the peroration. I&rsquo;ve just left them, but he had even then been going on
+      for twenty minutes, and I dare say that if you care to take a look you&rsquo;ll
+      find him, poor dear victim of duty, still <i>at</i> it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll warrant&mdash;for, as I often tell him, he makes the idea of one&rsquo;s
+      duty an awful thing to his friends by the extravagance with which he
+      always overdoes it.&rdquo; And the image itself appeared in some degree to
+      prompt this particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider.
+      &ldquo;I should like to come in for the grand <i>finale</i>, but I rattled over
+      in a great measure to meet a party, as he calls himself&mdash;and calls,
+      if you please, even me!&mdash;who&rsquo;s motoring down by appointment and whom
+      I think I should be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in
+      the hope of a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can imagine it perfectly,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently no
+      perceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. &ldquo;It quite sticks out
+      of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waiting to see.
+      But you haven&rsquo;t then,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;come from town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly
+      lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no longer than
+      was decent. &ldquo;But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her preference, just
+      settling down to bridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day gets
+      up&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which the Duchess never does?&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sand-gate only asked to be
+      allowed to show how she saw it. &ldquo;She fights to the last, invincible;
+      gathering in the spoils and only routing her friends?&rdquo; She abounded
+      genially in her privileged vision. &ldquo;Ah yes&mdash;we know something of
+      that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye, fixed
+      her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion.
+      &ldquo;You too then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She wouldn&rsquo;t, however, too meanly narrow it down. &ldquo;Well, in this house
+      generally; where I&rsquo;m so often made welcome, you see, and where&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where,&rdquo; he broke in at once, &ldquo;your jolly good footing quite sticks out of
+      <i>you</i>, perhaps you&rsquo;ll let me say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clearly didn&rsquo;t mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal
+      with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only
+      decide to deal quite simply. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t say more than I feel&mdash;and am
+      proud to feel!&mdash;at being of comfort when they&rsquo;re worried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This but fed the light flame of his easy perception&mdash;which lighted
+      for him, if she would, all the facts equally. &ldquo;And they&rsquo;re worried now,
+      you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of
+      making a great noise if she isn&rsquo;t paid? I ought to mind speaking of that
+      truth,&rdquo; he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of
+      delicacy; &ldquo;but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a
+      bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. &ldquo;Because poor Kitty Imber&mdash;who
+      should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as
+      I&rsquo;ve had to, goodness knows!&mdash;has thrown herself, with her impossible
+      big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to &lsquo;look to&rsquo; 
+      even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly
+      did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing
+      to the note of free inquiry in Lord John&rsquo;s reply. &ldquo;You mean that our
+      lovely young widows&mdash;to say nothing of lovely young wives&mdash;ought
+      by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after
+      a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. &ldquo;Well,
+      in that set&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother&rsquo;s set?&rdquo; However, if she could smile he could laugh. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m much
+      obliged!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she qualified, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t criticise her Grace; but the ways and
+      traditions and tone of this house&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make it&rdquo;&mdash;he took her sense straight from her&mdash;&ldquo;the house in
+      England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt
+      elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debts&mdash;to say
+      nothing of others!&mdash;and wishing to have at least those wiped out in
+      the interest of her reputation? Exactly so,&rdquo; he went on before she could
+      meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; &ldquo;and just that, I assure you, is a
+      large part of the reason I like to come here&mdash;since I personally
+      don&rsquo;t come with any such associations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the association of bankruptcy&mdash;no; as you represent the payee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a
+      liberty taken. &ldquo;How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bethought herself&mdash;but briefly and bravely. &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you
+      represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don&rsquo;t you
+      represent the belief&mdash;very natural, I grant&mdash;that more than <i>one</i>
+      perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy
+      old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our
+      admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending
+      yourself to dear Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent
+      infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing his
+      chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough on some
+      felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck, the
+      strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with the young
+      woman to whom our friends&rsquo; reference thus broadened still a vague quantity
+      for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quite possible&mdash;and
+      this despite an odd element in him that you might have described as a
+      certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son of a noble matron
+      recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed in no immediate or
+      aggressive manner any imputable private heritage or privilege of
+      arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiated fineness if his lustre
+      hadn&rsquo;t been a little prematurely dimmed. Active yet insubstantial, he was
+      slight and short and a trifle too punctually, though not yet quite
+      lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his eyebrow, the finish of
+      his facial line, the economy of &ldquo;treatment&rdquo; by which his negative nose had
+      been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had pleasant but hard little eyes&mdash;they glittered, handsomely,
+      without promise&mdash;and a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear
+      instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and
+      immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at
+      a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air
+      which still suggested sharp wants&mdash;and this was withal the ambiguity;
+      for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have
+      concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for
+      instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in
+      it would scarce have been considerately irritable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask what you mean,&rdquo; he inquired of Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;by the question
+      of my &lsquo;arranging&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean that you&rsquo;re the very clever son of a very clever mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m less clever than you think,&rdquo; he replied&mdash;&ldquo;if you really
+      think it of me at all; and mamma&rsquo;s a good sight cleverer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than I think?&rdquo; Lady Sandgate echoed. &ldquo;Why, she&rsquo;s the person in all our
+      world I would gladly most resemble&mdash;for her general ability to put
+      what she wants through.&rdquo; But she at once added: &ldquo;That is <i>if</i>&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       pausing on it with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If what then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of
+      cleverness without exception&mdash;and to have them,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate,
+      &ldquo;to the very end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. &ldquo;The very
+      end of what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be,
+      and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. &ldquo;Say of her so
+      wonderfully successful <i>general</i> career.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations
+      short. &ldquo;When you&rsquo;re as clever as she you&rsquo;ll be as good.&rdquo; To which he
+      subjoined: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good
+      she is.&rdquo; This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might
+      appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to take&mdash;he was so
+      prompt with a more explicit challenge. &ldquo;What is it exactly that you
+      suppose yourself to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to
+      take everything. &ldquo;I always proceed on the assumption that I know
+      everything, because that makes people tell me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t make we,&rdquo; he quite rang out, &ldquo;if I didn&rsquo;t want to! But as it
+      happens,&rdquo; he allowed, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a question it would be convenient to me to
+      put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with
+      him, extremely in Theign&rsquo;s confidence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited a little as for more. &ldquo;Is that your question&mdash;<i>whether</i>
+      I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but if you are you&rsquo;ll the better answer it&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re the best
+      friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman
+      with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as
+      so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I&rsquo;m happy to
+      say that&mdash;for my pleasure when I&rsquo;m really curious&mdash;this doesn&rsquo;t
+      close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I hope you&rsquo;ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about
+      it he&rsquo;s likely to listen to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate measured her ground&mdash;which scarce seemed extensive.
+      &ldquo;The person he most listens to just now&mdash;and in fact at any time, as
+      you must have seen for yourself&mdash;is that arch-tormentor, or at least
+      beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Imber&rsquo;s <i>here?</i>&rdquo; Lord John alertly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She arrived last night and&mdash;as we&rsquo;ve other visitors&mdash;seems to
+      have set up a side-show in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then she&rsquo;ll &lsquo;draw&rsquo; of course immensely, as she always does. But her
+      sister won&rsquo;t be in that case with her,&rdquo; the young man supposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well
+      may,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;but I must tell you that when I last noticed
+      them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John figured it a moment. &ldquo;Lady Imber&rdquo;&mdash;he ironically enlarged
+      the figure&mdash;&ldquo;<i>can</i> lead people away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear Grace,&rdquo; his companion returned, &ldquo;happens fortunately to be
+      firm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. &ldquo;Not against <i>me</i>,
+      however&mdash;you don&rsquo;t mean? You don&rsquo;t think she has a beastly prejudice&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may&mdash;or what
+      mayn&rsquo;t&mdash;have happened between you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I try to judge&rdquo;&mdash;and such candour as was possible to Lord John
+      seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m in fear of seeing her too
+      much as I want to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet
+      &ldquo;Are you absolutely in earnest about her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I am&mdash;why shouldn&rsquo;t I be? But,&rdquo; he said with impatience,
+      &ldquo;I want help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then, that&rsquo;s what Lady Imber&rsquo;s giving you.&rdquo; And as it appeared
+      to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she produced
+      others, and so far did help him&mdash;though the effort was in a degree
+      that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own unassisted control of
+      stray signs and shy lights. &ldquo;By telling her, by bringing it home to her,
+      that if she&rsquo;ll make up her mind to accept you the Duchess will do the
+      handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet
+      regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself. &ldquo;Well,
+      and by <i>me</i>.&rdquo; To which he added with more of a challenge in it: &ldquo;But
+      you really know what my mother will do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By my system,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate smiled, &ldquo;you see I&rsquo;ve guessed. What your
+      mother will do is what brought you over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s that,&rdquo; he allowed&mdash;&ldquo;and something else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something else?&rdquo; she derisively echoed. &ldquo;I should think &lsquo;that,&rsquo; for an
+      ardent lover, would have been enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but it&rsquo;s all one Job! I mean it&rsquo;s one idea,&rdquo; he hastened to explain&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      you think Lady Imber&rsquo;s really acting on her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mightn&rsquo;t you go and see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would in a moment if I hadn&rsquo;t to look out for another matter too.&rdquo; And
+      he renewed his attention to his watch. &ldquo;I mean getting straight at my
+      American, the party I just mentioned&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she had already taken him up. &ldquo;You too have an American and a &lsquo;party,&rsquo; 
+      and yours also motors down&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Breckenridge Bender.&rdquo; Lord John named him with a shade of elation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gaped at the fuller light &ldquo;You <i>know</i> my Breckenridge?&mdash;who
+      I hoped was coming for me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. &ldquo;Had he told you so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand since
+      her entrance. &ldquo;He has sent me that&mdash;which, delivered to me ten
+      minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man read out this missive. &ldquo;&lsquo;Failing to find you in Bruton
+      Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.&rsquo;&rdquo; It did
+      involve an ambiguity. &ldquo;Why, he has been engaged these three days to
+      coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my
+      business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich
+      scene. &ldquo;Then why does he say it&rsquo;s me he&rsquo;s pursuing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced
+      monopoly. &ldquo;My dear lady, he&rsquo;s pursuing expensive works of art.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By which you imply that I&rsquo;m one?&rdquo; She might have been wound up by her
+      disappointment to almost any irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I imply&mdash;or rather I affirm&mdash;that every handsome woman is! But
+      what he arranged with me about,&rdquo; Lord John explained, &ldquo;was that he should
+      see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in
+      particular&mdash;of which he had heard so much and to which I&rsquo;ve been thus
+      glad to assist him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener&rsquo;s
+      mystification. &ldquo;Then why&mdash;this whole week that I&rsquo;ve been in the house&mdash;hasn&rsquo;t
+      our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because our good friend here has had no reason&rdquo;&mdash;Lord John could
+      treat it now as simple enough. &ldquo;Good as he is in all ways, he&rsquo;s so best of
+      all about showing the house and its contents that I haven&rsquo;t even thought
+      necessary to write him that I&rsquo;m introducing Breckenridge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should have been happy to introduce him,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate just quavered&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      I had at all known he wanted it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to
+      pronounce it a trifle he didn&rsquo;t care a fig for. &ldquo;I surrender you that
+      privilege then&mdash;of presenting him to his host&mdash;if I&rsquo;ve seemed to
+      you to snatch it from you.&rdquo; To which Lord John added, as with liberality
+      unrestricted, &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve been taking him about to see what&rsquo;s worth while&mdash;as
+      only last week to Lady Lappington&rsquo;s Longhi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady
+      Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. &ldquo;Her Longhi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you know her great Venetian family group, the
+      What-do-you-call-&rsquo;ems?&mdash;seven full-length figures, each one a gem,
+      for which he paid her her price before he left the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could but make it more richly resound&mdash;almost stricken, lost in
+      her wistful thought: &ldquo;Seven full-length figures? Her price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight thousand&mdash;slap down. Bender knows,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;what he
+      wants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does he want only&rdquo;&mdash;her wonder grew and grew&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What-do-you-call-&rsquo;ems&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He most usually wants what he can&rsquo;t have.&rdquo; Lord John made scarce more of
+      it than that. &ldquo;But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went
+      <i>at</i> him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. &ldquo;How horrible&mdash;at
+      the rate things are leaving us!&rdquo; But this was far from the end of her
+      interest. &ldquo;And is that the way he pays?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before he leaves the house?&rdquo; Lord John lived it amusedly over. &ldquo;Well, <i>she</i>
+      took care of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How incredibly vulgar!&rdquo; It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still
+      other connections&mdash;which might have attenuated Lady Lappington&rsquo;s
+      case, though she didn&rsquo;t glance at this. &ldquo;He makes the most scandalous eyes&mdash;the
+      ruffian!&mdash;at my great-grandmother.&rdquo; And then as richly to enlighten
+      any blankness: &ldquo;My tremendous Lawrence, don&rsquo;t you know?&mdash;in her
+      wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such extraordinarily speaking eyes,
+      such lovely arms and hands, such wonderful flesh-tints: universally
+      considered the masterpiece of the artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked, in
+      which he wasn&rsquo;t interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it.
+      &ldquo;And are you going to <i>sell</i> the masterpiece of the artist?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She held her head high. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve indignantly refused&mdash;for all his
+      pressing me so hard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet that&rsquo;s what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I need hardly fear it perhaps if&mdash;in
+      the light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him&mdash;his
+      pursuit becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Lord John returned, &ldquo;he kills two birds with one stone&mdash;he sees
+      both Sir Joshua and you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair
+      associate. &ldquo;Does he want to buy <i>their</i> pride and glory?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but the
+      bright reflector of her thought. &ldquo;Is that wonder for sale?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. &ldquo;Not,
+      surely, by <i>any</i> monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t fancy him&mdash;no!&rdquo; And Lord John appeared to renounce the
+      effort. &ldquo;But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These things might be, Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s face and gesture apparently
+      signified; but another question diverted her. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re clearly a wonderful
+      showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you&rsquo;re on such an occasion
+      a&mdash;well, a closely interested one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Interested&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed; though it wasn&rsquo;t to gain time, he showed, for
+      he would in that case have taken more. &ldquo;To the extent, you mean, of my
+      little percentage?&rdquo; And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
+      smile on him: &ldquo;Why do you ask if&mdash;with your high delicacy about your
+      great-grandmother&mdash;you&rsquo;ve nothing to place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when she
+      spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared. &ldquo;I ask
+      because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to the&mdash;how
+      shall I name it?&mdash;the common weal; and because of my general strong
+      feeling that we don&rsquo;t want any more of our national treasures (for I
+      regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s much in this country and age,&rdquo; he replied in an off-hand manner,
+      &ldquo;to be said about <i>that</i>,&rdquo; The present, however, was not the time to
+      say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it with a
+      smile that signified sufficiency. &ldquo;To my friends, I need scarcely remark
+      to you, I&rsquo;m all the friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to the
+      terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this
+      functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy
+      interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as she
+      turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the friend then
+      clearly who&rsquo;s wanted in the park.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand a
+      missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her
+      companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where
+      she had left it. &ldquo;By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you&rsquo;ll join
+      them below the terrace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Grace hopes,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate for the young man&rsquo;s encouragement.
+      &ldquo;There you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took up the motor-cap he had lain down on coming in. &ldquo;I rush to
+      Lady Grace, but don&rsquo;t demoralise Bender!&rdquo; And he went forth to the terrace
+      and the gardens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Banks looked about as for some further exercise of his high function.
+      &ldquo;Will you have tea, my lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeared to strike her as premature. &ldquo;Oh, thanks&mdash;when they all
+      come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll scarcely <i>all</i>, my lady&rdquo;&mdash;he indicated respectfully
+      that he knew what he was talking about. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s tea in her ladyship&rsquo;s
+      tent; but,&rdquo; he qualified, &ldquo;it has also been ordered for the saloon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then,&rdquo; she said cheerfully, &ldquo;Mr. Bender will be glad&mdash;!&rdquo; And she
+      became, with this, aware of the approach of another visitor. Banks
+      considered, up and down, the gentleman ushered in, at the left, by the
+      footman who had received him at the main entrance to the house. &ldquo;Here he
+      must be, my lady.&rdquo; With which he retired to the spacious opposite quarter,
+      where he vanished, while the footman, his own office performed, retreated
+      as he had come, and Lady Sandgate, all hospitality, received the
+      many-sided author of her specious telegram, of Lord John&rsquo;s irritating
+      confidence and of Lady Lappington&rsquo;s massive cheque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Having greeted him with an explicitly gracious welcome and both hands out,
+      she had at once gone on: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll of course have tea?&mdash;in the saloon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his mechanism seemed of the type that has to expand and revolve before
+      sounding. &ldquo;Why; the very first thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She only desired, as her laugh showed, to accommodate. &ldquo;Ah, have it the
+      last if you like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see your English teas&mdash;!&rdquo; he pleaded as he looked about him, so
+      immediately and frankly interested in the place and its contents that his
+      friend could only have taken this for the very glance with which he must
+      have swept Lady Lappington&rsquo;s inferior scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;re too much for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they&rsquo;re too many. I think I&rsquo;ve had two or three on the road&mdash;at
+      any rate my man did. I like to do business before&mdash;&rdquo; But his sequence
+      dropped as his eye caught some object across the wealth of space.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She divertedly picked it up. &ldquo;Before tea, Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before everything, Lady Sandgate.&rdquo; He was immensely genial, but a queer,
+      quaint, rough-edged distinctness somehow kept it safe&mdash;for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve <i>come</i> to do business?&rdquo; Her appeal and her emphasis
+      melted as into a caress&mdash;which, however, spent itself on his large
+      high person as he consented, with less of demonstration but more of
+      attention, to look down upon her. She could therefore but reinforce it by
+      an intenser note. &ldquo;To tell me you <i>will</i> treat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender had six feet of stature and an air as of having received
+      benefits at the hands of fortune. Substantial, powerful, easy, he shone as
+      with a glorious cleanness, a supplied and equipped and appointed sanity
+      and security; aids to action that might have figured a pair of very ample
+      wings&mdash;wide pinions for the present conveniently folded, but that he
+      would certainly on occasion agitate for great efforts and spread for great
+      flights. These things would have made him quite an admirable, even a
+      worshipful, image of full-blown life and character, had not the
+      affirmation and the emphasis halted in one important particular. Fortune,
+      felicity, nature, the perverse or interfering old fairy at his cradle-side&mdash;whatever
+      the ministering power might have been&mdash;had simply overlooked and
+      neglected his vast wholly-shaven face, which thus showed not so much for
+      perfunctorily scamped as for not treated, as for neither formed nor
+      fondled nor finished, at all. Nothing seemed to have been done for it but
+      what the razor and the sponge, the tooth-brush and the looking-glass could
+      officiously do; it had in short resisted any possibly finer attrition at
+      the hands of fifty years of offered experience. It had developed on the
+      lines, if lines they could be called, of the mere scoured and polished and
+      initialled &ldquo;mug&rdquo; rather than to any effect of a composed physiognomy;
+      though we must at the same time add that its wearer carried this
+      featureless disk as with the warranted confidence that might have attended
+      a warning headlight or a glaring motor-lamp. The object, however one named
+      it, showed you at least where he was, and most often that he was straight
+      upon you. It was fearlessly and resistingly across the path of his advance
+      that Lady Sandgate had thrown herself, and indeed with such success that
+      he soon connected her demonstration with a particular motive. &ldquo;For your
+      grandmother, Lady Sandgate?&rdquo; he then returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For my grandmother&rsquo;s <i>mother</i>, Mr. Bender&mdash;the most beautiful
+      woman of her time and the greatest of all Lawrences, no matter whose; as
+      you quite acknowledged, you know, in our talk in Bruton Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender bethought himself further&mdash;yet drawing it out; as if the
+      familiar fact of his being &ldquo;made up to&rdquo; had never had such special
+      softness and warmth of pressure. &ldquo;Do you want very, <i>very</i> much&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had already caught him up. &ldquo;&lsquo;Very, very much&rsquo; for her? Well, Mr.
+      Bender,&rdquo; she smilingly replied, &ldquo;I think I should like her full value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean&rdquo;&mdash;he kindly discriminated&mdash;&ldquo;do you want so badly to work
+      her off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be an intense convenience to me&mdash;so much so that your
+      telegram made me at once fondly hope you&rsquo;d be arriving to conclude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such measure of response as he had good-naturedly given her was the mere
+      frayed edge of a mastering detachment, the copious, impatient range
+      elsewhere of his true attention. Somehow, however, he still seemed kind
+      even while, turning his back upon her, he moved off to look at one of the
+      several, the famous Dedborough pictures&mdash;stray specimens, by every
+      presumption, lost a little in the whole bright bigness. &ldquo;&lsquo;Conclude&rsquo;?&rdquo; he
+      echoed as he approached a significantly small canvas. &ldquo;You ladies want to
+      get there before the road&rsquo;s so much as laid or the country&rsquo;s safe! Do you
+      know what this <i>here</i> is?&rdquo; he at once went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you can&rsquo;t have <i>that!</i>&rdquo; she cried as with full authority&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      you must really understand that you can&rsquo;t have everything. You mustn&rsquo;t
+      expect to ravage Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. &ldquo;I guess it&rsquo;s a bogus Cuyp&mdash;but
+      I know Lord Theign <i>has</i> things. He won&rsquo;t do business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not in the least, and can never be, in my tight place,&rdquo; Lady
+      Sandgate replied; &ldquo;but he&rsquo;s as proud as he&rsquo;s kind, dear man, and as solid
+      as he&rsquo;s proud; so that if you came down under a different impression&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       Well, she could only exhale the folly of his error with an unction that
+      represented, whatever he might think of it, all her competence to answer
+      for their host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He scarce thought of it enough, on any side, however, to be diverted from
+      prior dispositions. &ldquo;I came on an understanding that I should find my
+      friend Lord John, and that Lord Theign would, on his introduction, kindly
+      let me look round. But being before lunch in Bruton Street I knocked at
+      your door&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For another look,&rdquo; she quickly interposed, &ldquo;at my Lawrence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For another look at <i>you</i>, Lady Sandgate&mdash;your
+      great-grandmother wasn&rsquo;t required. Informed you were here, and struck with
+      the coincidence of my being myself presently due,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I
+      despatched you my wire, on coming away, just to keep up your spirits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You <i>don&rsquo;t</i> keep them up, you depress them to anguish,&rdquo; she almost
+      passionately protested, &ldquo;when you don&rsquo;t tell me you&rsquo;ll treat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused in his preoccupation, his perambulation, conscious evidently of
+      no reluctance that was worth a scene with so charming and so hungry a
+      woman. &ldquo;Well, if it&rsquo;s a question of your otherwise suffering torments, may
+      I have another interview with the old lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Mr. Bender, she&rsquo;s in the flower of her youth; she only yearns for
+      interviews, and you may have,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate earnestly declared, &ldquo;as many
+      as you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you must be there to protect me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then as soon as I return&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;&mdash;it clearly cost him little to say&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come right
+      round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She joyously registered the vow. &ldquo;Only meanwhile then, please, never a
+      word!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never a word, certainly. But where all this time,&rdquo; Mr. Bender asked, &ldquo;is
+      Lord John?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, as he spoke, found her eyes meeting those of a young woman
+      who, presenting herself from without, stood framed in the doorway to the
+      terrace; a slight fair grave young woman, of middle, stature and simply
+      dressed, whose brow showed clear even under the heavy shade of a large hat
+      surmounted with big black bows and feathers. Her eyes had vaguely
+      questioned those of her elder, who at once replied to the gentleman
+      forming the subject of their inquiry: &ldquo;Lady Grace must know.&rdquo; At this the
+      young woman came forward, and Lady Sandgate introduced the visitor. &ldquo;My
+      dear Grace, this is Mr. Breckenridge Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation, but
+      she had urbanity to spare. &ldquo;Of whom Lord John has told me,&rdquo; she returned,
+      &ldquo;and whom I&rsquo;m glad to see. Lord John,&rdquo; she explained to his waiting
+      friend, &ldquo;is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big Temperance
+      school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if you care to
+      go out&mdash;!&rdquo; She gave him in fine his choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn&rsquo;t
+      the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his
+      prudence. &ldquo;Are there any pictures in the park?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace&rsquo;s facial response represented less humour perhaps, but more
+      play. &ldquo;We find our park itself rather a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s own levity at any rate persisted. &ldquo;With a big Temperance
+      school-feast?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s a great judge of pictures,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate said as to
+      forestall any impression of excessive freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will there be more tea?&rdquo; he pursued, almost presuming on this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;ll
+      be plenty of tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. &ldquo;Well, Lady Grace, I&rsquo;m after
+      pictures, but I take them &lsquo;neat.&rsquo; May I go right round here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, love,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate at once said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll let me show him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A moment, dear&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Grace gently demurred. &ldquo;Do go round,&rdquo; she
+      conformably added to Mr. Bender; &ldquo;take your ease and your time.
+      Everything&rsquo;s open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,
+      you&rsquo;ll have the place to yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be in clover&mdash;sure!&rdquo;
+       But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture, which he could
+      fluently enough name. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll find &lsquo;The Beautiful Duchess of
+      Waterbridge&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the
+      quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. &ldquo;At the very
+      end of <i>those</i> rooms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had wide eyes for the vista. &ldquo;About thirty in a row, hey?&rdquo; And he was
+      already off. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll work right through!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. &ldquo;Lord John warned
+      me he was &lsquo;funny&rsquo;&mdash;but you already know him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There might have been a sense of embarrassment in the way in which, as to
+      gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the small
+      picture pronounced upon by Mr. Bender. &ldquo;He thinks your little Cuyp a
+      fraud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That one?&rdquo; Lady Grace could but stare. &ldquo;The wretch!&rdquo; However, she made,
+      without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous question.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve met him before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a little&mdash;in town. Being &lsquo;after pictures&rsquo;&rdquo; Lady Sandgate
+      explained, &ldquo;he has been after my great-grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She,&rdquo; said Lady Grace with amusement, &ldquo;must have found him funny! But he
+      can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord John, and
+      while you, if you&rsquo;ll be so good, go back to support father&mdash;in the
+      hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that he
+      complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as sneaking
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. &ldquo;I delight in his
+      triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it&rsquo;s a question
+      of support, aren&rsquo;t you yourself failing him quite as much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had, however, no effect on the girl&rsquo;s confidence. &ldquo;Ah, my dear, I&rsquo;m
+      not at all the same thing, and as I&rsquo;m the person in the world he least
+      misses&mdash;&rdquo; Well, such a fact spoke for itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been free to return and wait for Lord John?&rdquo;&mdash;that was the
+      sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as
+      speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though very
+      quietly, to correct her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not come back to wait for Lord John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he hasn&rsquo;t told you&mdash;if you&rsquo;ve talked&mdash;with what idea he
+      has come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.
+      &ldquo;Kitty has told me&mdash;what it suits her to pretend to suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Kitty&rsquo;s pretensions and suppositions always go with what happens&mdash;at
+      the moment, among all her wonderful happenings&mdash;to suit her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace let that question answer itself&mdash;she took the case up
+      further on. &ldquo;What I can&rsquo;t make out is why this <i>should</i> so suit her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what <i>I</i> can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and
+      turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless
+      presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. &ldquo;Do you like him
+      enough to risk the chance of Kitty&rsquo;s being for once right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace gave it a thought&mdash;with which she moved away. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      know how much I like him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor how little!&rdquo; cried her friend, who evidently found amusement in the
+      tone of it. &ldquo;And you&rsquo;re not disposed to take the time to find out? He&rsquo;s at
+      least better than the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The &lsquo;others&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Grace was blank for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The others of his set.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, his set! That wouldn&rsquo;t be difficult&mdash;by what I imagine of some
+      of them. But he means well enough,&rdquo; the girl added; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s very charming
+      and does me great honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief arrest.
+      &ldquo;Then may I tell your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the subject.
+      &ldquo;Tell my father, please, that I&rsquo;m expecting Mr. Crimble; of whom I&rsquo;ve
+      spoken to him even if he doesn&rsquo;t remember, and who bicycles this afternoon
+      ten miles over from where he&rsquo;s staying&mdash;with some people we don&rsquo;t
+      know&mdash;to look at the pictures, about which he&rsquo;s awfully keen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate took it in. &ldquo;Ah, like Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought &ldquo;May I ask
+      then&mdash;if one&rsquo;s to meet him&mdash;who he is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, father knows&mdash;or ought to&mdash;that I sat next him, in London,
+      a month ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and
+      nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of Connoisseurship&mdash;which
+      is upsetting, as perhaps you&rsquo;re not aware, all the old-fashioned canons of
+      art-criticism, everything we&rsquo;ve stupidly thought right and held dear; that
+      he was to spend Easter in these parts, and that he should like greatly to
+      be allowed some day to come over and make acquaintance with our things. I
+      told him,&rdquo; Lady Grace wound up, &ldquo;that nothing would be easier; a note from
+      him arrived before dinner&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate jumped the rest &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s for him you&rsquo;ve come in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s for him I&rsquo;ve come in,&rdquo; the girl assented with serenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good&mdash;though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first
+      just tell me <i>this</i>&mdash;whether when you sent in ten minutes ago
+      for Lord John to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?&rdquo; And
+      she followed it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. &ldquo;Was it
+      because you knew why he had arrived?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young friend hesitated still. &ldquo;&lsquo;Why &lsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So particularly to speak to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since he was expected and mightn&rsquo;t know where I was,&rdquo; Lady Grace said
+      after an instant, &ldquo;I wanted naturally to be civil to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And had he time there to tell you,&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate asked, &ldquo;how very civil
+      he wants to be to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, only to tell me that his friend&mdash;who&rsquo;s off there&mdash;was
+      coming; for Kitty at once appropriated him and was still in possession
+      when I came away.&rdquo; Then, as deciding at last on perfect frankness, Lady
+      Grace went on: &ldquo;If you want to know, I sent for news of him because Kitty
+      insisted on my doing so; saying, so very oddly and quite in her own way,
+      that she herself didn&rsquo;t wish to &lsquo;appear in it.&rsquo; She had done nothing but
+      say to me for an hour, rather worryingly, what you&rsquo;ve just said&mdash;that
+      it&rsquo;s me he&rsquo;s what, like Mr. Bender, she calls &lsquo;after&rsquo;; but as soon as he
+      appeared she pounced on him, and I left him&mdash;I assure you quite
+      resignedly&mdash;in her hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wants&rdquo;&mdash;it was easy for Lady Sandgate to remark&mdash;&ldquo;to talk
+      of you to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know <i>what</i> she wants,&rdquo; the girl replied as with rather a
+      tired patience; &ldquo;Kitty wants so many things at once. She always wants
+      money, in quantities, to begin with&mdash;and all to throw so horribly
+      away; so that whenever I see her &lsquo;in&rsquo; so very deep with any one I always
+      imagine her appealing for some new tip as to how it&rsquo;s to be come by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitty&rsquo;s an abyss, I grant you, and with my disinterested devotion to your
+      father&mdash;in requital of all his kindness to me since Lord Sandgate&rsquo;s
+      death and since your mother&rsquo;s&mdash;I can never be too grateful to you, my
+      dear, for your being so different a creature. But what is she going to
+      gain financially,&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate pursued with a strong emphasis on her
+      adverb, &ldquo;by working up our friend&rsquo;s confidence in your listening to him&mdash;if
+      you <i>are</i> to listen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t in the least engaged to listen,&rdquo; said Lady Grace&mdash;&ldquo;it will
+      depend on the music he makes!&rdquo; But she added with light cynicism: &ldquo;Perhaps
+      she&rsquo;s to gain a commission!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On his fairly getting you?&rdquo; And then as the girl assented by silence: &ldquo;Is
+      he in a position to pay her one?&rdquo; Lady Sandgate asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say the Duchess is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you see the Duchess <i>producing</i> money&mdash;with all that
+      Kitty, as we&rsquo;re not ignorant, owes her? Hundreds and hundreds and
+      hundreds!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate piled them up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her young friend&rsquo;s gesture checked it. &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t tell me how many&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      too sad and too ugly and too wrong!&rdquo; To which, however, Lady Grace added:
+      &ldquo;But perhaps that will be just her way!&rdquo; And then as her companion seemed
+      for the moment not quite to follow: &ldquo;By letting Kitty off her debt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitty goes free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has her creditor&rsquo;s release?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For every shilling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if he only fails?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why then of course,&rdquo; said now quite lucid Lady Grace, &ldquo;she throws herself
+      more than ever on poor father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor father indeed!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate richly sighed it
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but
+      he after all and in spite of everything adores her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the point, you mean&rdquo;&mdash;for Lady Sandgate could clearly but wonder&mdash;&ldquo;of
+      really sacrificing you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The weight of Lady Grace&rsquo;s charming deep eyes on her face made her pause
+      while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange
+      determined in the girl a grave appeal. &ldquo;You think I <i>should</i> be
+      sacrificed if I married him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly. &ldquo;<i>Could</i>
+      you marry him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace waited a moment &ldquo;Do you mean for Kitty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For himself even&mdash;if they should convince you, among them, that he
+      cares for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had another delay. &ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s his awful mother&rsquo;s son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but you wouldn&rsquo;t marry his mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately
+      conscious of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even when,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, &ldquo;she so markedly likes
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This determined in the girl a fine impatience. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;like&rsquo; me, she
+      only <i>wants</i> me&mdash;which is a very different thing; wants me for
+      my father&rsquo;s so particularly beautiful position, and my mother&rsquo;s so
+      supremely great people, and for everything we have been and have done, and
+      still are and still have: except of course poor not-at-all-model Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this luminous account of the matter Lady Sand-gate turned as to a
+      genial sun-burst. &ldquo;I see indeed&mdash;for the general immaculate
+      connection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words had no note of irony, but Lady Grace, in her great seriousness,
+      glanced with deprecation at the possibility. &ldquo;Well, we <i>haven&rsquo;t</i> had
+      false notes. We&rsquo;ve scarcely even had bad moments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you&rsquo;ve been beatific!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate enviously, quite
+      ruefully, felt it. But any further treatment of the question was checked
+      by the re-entrance of the footman&mdash;a demonstration explained by the
+      concomitant appearance of a young man in eyeglasses and with the ends of
+      his trousers clipped together as for cycling. &ldquo;This must be your friend,&rdquo;
+       she had only time to say to the daughter of the house; with which, alert
+      and reminded of how she was awaited elsewhere, she retreated before her
+      companion&rsquo;s visitor, who had come in with his guide from the vestibule.
+      She passed away to the terrace and the gardens, Mr. Hugh Crimble&rsquo;s
+      announced name ringing in her ears&mdash;to some effect that we are as yet
+      not qualified to discern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had turned to meet Mr. Hugh Crimble, whose pleasure in at once
+      finding her lighted his keen countenance and broke into easy words. &ldquo;So
+      awfully kind of you&mdash;in the midst of the great doings I noticed&mdash;to
+      have found a beautiful minute for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I left the great doings, which are almost over, to every one&rsquo;s relief, I
+      think,&rdquo; the girl returned, &ldquo;so that your precious time shouldn&rsquo;t be taken
+      to hunt for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clearly for him, on this bright answer, as if her white hand were
+      holding out the perfect flower of felicity. &ldquo;You came in from your revels
+      on purpose&mdash;with the same charity you showed me from that first
+      moment?&rdquo; They stood smiling at each other as in an exchange of sympathy
+      already confessed&mdash;and even as if finding that their relation had
+      grown during the lapse of contact; she recognising the effect of what they
+      had originally felt as bravely as he might name it. What the fine,
+      slightly long oval of her essentially quiet face&mdash;quiet in spite of
+      certain vague depths of reference to forces of the strong high order,
+      forces involved and implanted, yet also rather spent in the process&mdash;kept
+      in range from under her redundant black hat was the strength of
+      expression, the directness of communication, that her guest appeared to
+      borrow from the unframed and unattached nippers unceasingly perched, by
+      their mere ground-glass rims, as she remembered, on the bony bridge of his
+      indescribably authoritative (since it was at the same time decidedly
+      inquisitive) young nose. She must, however, also have embraced in this
+      contemplation, she must more or less again have interpreted, his main
+      physiognomic mark, the degree to which his clean jaw was underhung and his
+      lower lip protruded; a lapse of regularity made evident by a suppression
+      of beard and moustache as complete as that practised by Mr. Bender&mdash;though
+      without the appearance consequent in the latter&rsquo;s case, that of the
+      flagrantly vain appeal in the countenance for some other exhibition of a
+      history, of a process of production, than this so superficial one. With
+      the interested and interesting girl sufficiently under our attention while
+      we thus try to evoke her, we may even make out some wonder in her as to
+      why the so perceptibly protrusive lower lip of this acquaintance of an
+      hour or two should positively have contributed to his being handsome
+      instead of much more logically interfering with it. We might in fact in
+      such a case even have followed her into another and no less refined a
+      speculation&mdash;the question of whether the surest seat of his good
+      looks mightn&rsquo;t after all be his high, fair, if somewhat narrow, forehead,
+      crowned with short crisp brown hair and which, after a fashion of its own,
+      predominated without overhanging. He spoke after they had stood just face
+      to face almost long enough for awkwardness. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t forgotten one item
+      of your kindness to me on that rather bleak occasion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bleak do you call it?&rdquo; she laughed. &ldquo;Why I found it, rather, tropical&mdash;&lsquo;lush.&rsquo; 
+      My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of the White City.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you made it doubtless bleak for <i>him</i>, let us say. <i>I</i>
+      couldn&rsquo;t let you alone, I remember, about <i>this</i>&mdash;it was like a
+      shipwrecked signal to a sail on the horizon.&rdquo; &ldquo;This&rdquo; obviously meant for
+      the young man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender,
+      to be conscious of a thick solicitation of the eye&mdash;and much more
+      than he, doubtless, of a tug at the imagination; and he broke&mdash;characteristically,
+      you would have been sure&mdash;into a great free gaiety of recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we&rsquo;ve nothing particular in the hall,&rdquo; Lady Grace amiably objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I&rsquo;m an ogre,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;before
+      a new and rare feast!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She happily took up his figure. &ldquo;Then won&rsquo;t you begin&mdash;as a first
+      course&mdash;with tea after your ride? If the other, that is&mdash;for
+      there has been an ogre before you&mdash;has left any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some tea, with pleasure&rdquo;&mdash;he looked all his longing; &ldquo;though when
+      you talk of a fellow-feaster I should have supposed that, on such a day as
+      this especially, you&rsquo;d find yourselves running a continuous <i>table
+      d&rsquo;hôte</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we can&rsquo;t work sports in our gallery and saloon&mdash;the banging or
+      whacking and shoving amusements that are all most people care for; unless,
+      perhaps,&rdquo; Lady Grace went on, &ldquo;your own peculiar one, as I understand you,
+      of playing football with the old benighted traditions and attributions you
+      everywhere meet: in fact I think you said the old idiotic superstitions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble went more than half-way to meet this description of his
+      fondest activity; he indeed even beckoned it on. &ldquo;The names and stories
+      and styles&mdash;the so often vain legend, not to be too invidious&mdash;of
+      author or subject or school?&rdquo; But he had a drop, no less, as from the
+      sense of a cause sometimes lost. &ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s a game at which we <i>all</i>
+      can play!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Though scarcely,&rdquo; Lady Grace suggested, &ldquo;at which we all can score.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words appeared indeed to take meaning from his growing impression of
+      the place and its charm&mdash;of the number of objects, treasures of art,
+      that pressed for appreciation of their importance. &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;no one can ever have scored much on sacred spots of <i>this</i> order&mdash;which
+      express so the grand impunity of their pride, their claims, their
+      assurance!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had great luck,&rdquo; she granted&mdash;&ldquo;as I&rsquo;ve just been reminded; but
+      ever since those terrible things you told me in town&mdash;about the
+      tremendous tricks of the whirligig of time and the aesthetic fools&rsquo; 
+      paradise in which so many of us live&mdash;I&rsquo;ve gone about with my heart
+      in my mouth. Who knows that while I talk Mr. Bender mayn&rsquo;t be pulling us
+      to pieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble had a shudder of remembrance. &ldquo;Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rich American who&rsquo;s going round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave him a sharper shock. &ldquo;The wretch who bagged Lady Lappington&rsquo;s
+      Longhi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace showed surprise. &ldquo;Is he a wretch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her visitor but asked to be extravagant. &ldquo;Rather&mdash;the scoundrel. He
+      offered his infernal eight thousand down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I thought you meant he had played some trick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish he had&mdash;he could then have been collared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Lady Grace peacefully smiled, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s no use his offering <i>us</i>
+      eight thousand&mdash;or eighteen or even eighty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble stared as at the odd superfluity of this reassurance, almost
+      crude on exquisite lips and contradicting an imputation no one would have
+      indecently made. &ldquo;Gracious goodness, I hope not! The man surely doesn&rsquo;t <i>suppose</i>
+      you&rsquo;d traffic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might, while she still smiled at him, have been fairly enjoying the
+      friendly horror she produced. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite know what he supposes. But
+      people <i>have</i> trafficked; people do; people are trafficking all
+      round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Hugh Crimble cried, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s what deprives me of my rest and, as a
+      lover of our vast and beneficent art-wealth, poisons my waking hours. That
+      art-wealth is at the mercy of a leak there appears no means of stopping.&rdquo;
+       She had tapped a spring in him, clearly, and the consequent flood might
+      almost at any moment become copious. &ldquo;Precious things are going out of our
+      distracted country at a quicker rate than the very quickest&mdash;a
+      century and more ago&mdash;of their ever coming in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was sharply struck, but was also unmistakably a person in whom stirred
+      thought soon found connections and relations. &ldquo;Well, I suppose our
+      art-wealth came in&mdash;save for those awkward Elgin Marbles!&mdash;mainly
+      by purchase too, didn&rsquo;t it? We ourselves largely took it away from
+      somewhere, didn&rsquo;t we? We didn&rsquo;t <i>grow</i> it all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We grew some of the loveliest flowers&mdash;and on the whole to-day the
+      most exposed.&rdquo; He had been pulled up but for an instant. &ldquo;Great
+      Gainsboroughs and Sir Joshuas and Romneys and Sargents, great Turners and
+      Constables and old Cromes and Brabazons, form, you&rsquo;ll recognise, a vast
+      garden in themselves. What have we ever for instance more successfully
+      grown than your splendid &lsquo;Duchess of Waterbridge&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl showed herself ready at once to recognise under his eloquence
+      anything he would. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;it&rsquo;s our Sir Joshua, I believe, that Mr.
+      Bender has proclaimed himself particularly &lsquo;after.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It brought a cloud to her friend&rsquo;s face. &ldquo;Then he&rsquo;ll be capable of
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of anything, no doubt, but of making my father capable&mdash;! And you
+      haven&rsquo;t at any rate,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so much as seen the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon&mdash;I saw it at the Guildhall three years ago; and am
+      almost afraid of getting again, with a fresh sense of its beauty, a
+      livelier sense of its danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, however, was so far from fear that she could even afford pity.
+      &ldquo;Poor baffled Mr. Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rich and confident Mr. Bender!&rdquo; Crimble cried. &ldquo;Once given his money,
+      his confidence is a horrid engine in itself&mdash;there&rsquo;s the rub! I dare
+      say&rdquo;&mdash;the young man saw it all&mdash;&ldquo;he has brought his poisonous
+      cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it her less exasperated wonder. &ldquo;One has heard of that, but only
+      in the case of some particularly pushing dealer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Bender, to do him justice, isn&rsquo;t a particularly pushing dealer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; Lady Grace judiciously returned; &ldquo;I think he&rsquo;s not a dealer at all,
+      but just what you a moment ago spoke of yourself as being.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a glance at his possibly wild recent past. &ldquo;A fond true lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As we <i>all</i> were in our lucky time&mdash;when we rum-aged Italy and
+      Spain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He appeared to recognise this complication&mdash;of Bender&rsquo;s voracious
+      integrity; but only to push it away. &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know whether the best
+      lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers&mdash;but I feel to-day that
+      they&rsquo;re the best keepers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The breath of his emphasis blew, as her eyes showed, on the girl&rsquo;s dimmer
+      fire. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as if it were suddenly in the air that you&rsquo;ve brought us some
+      light or some help&mdash;that you may do something really good for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean &lsquo;mark down,&rsquo; as they say at the shops, all your greatest
+      claims?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His chord of sensibility had trembled all gratefully into derision, and
+      not to seem to swagger he had put his possible virtue at its lowest. This
+      she beautifully showed that she beautifully saw. &ldquo;I dare say that if you
+      did even that we should have to take it from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it may very well be,&rdquo; he laughed back, &ldquo;the reason why I feel, under
+      my delightful, wonderful impression, a bit anxious and nervous and
+      afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That shows,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;that you suspect us of horrors hiding from
+      justice, and that your natural kindness yet shrinks from handing us over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, clearly, she might put it as she liked&mdash;it all came back to his
+      being more charmed. &ldquo;Heaven knows I&rsquo;ve wanted a chance at you, but what
+      should you say if, having then at last just taken you in in your so
+      apparent perfection, I should feel it the better part of valour simply to
+      mount my &lsquo;bike&rsquo; again and spin away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be sure that at the end of the avenue you&rsquo;d turn right round and
+      come back. You&rsquo;d think again of Mr. Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom I don&rsquo;t, however, you see&mdash;if he&rsquo;s prowling off there&mdash;in
+      the least want to meet.&rdquo; Crimble made the point with gaiety. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+      what I mightn&rsquo;t do to him&mdash;and yet it&rsquo;s not of my temptation to
+      violence, after all, that I&rsquo;m most afraid. It&rsquo;s of the brutal mistake of
+      one&rsquo;s breaking&mdash;with one&rsquo;s priggish, precious modernity and one&rsquo;s
+      possibly futile discriminations&mdash;into a <i>general</i> situation or
+      composition, as we say, so serene and sound and right. What should one do
+      here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one&rsquo;s breath and walk on
+      tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell me,
+      instinctively stay outside. I saw that all,&rdquo; the young man went on with
+      more weight in his ardour, &ldquo;I saw it, while we talked in London, as your
+      natural setting and your native air&mdash;and now ten minutes on the spot
+      have made it sink into my spirit. You&rsquo;re a case, all together, of
+      enchanted harmony, of perfect equilibrium&mdash;there&rsquo;s nothing to be done
+      or said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend listened to this eloquence with her eyes lowered, then raising
+      them to meet, with a vague insistence, his own; after which something she
+      had seen there appeared to determine in her another motion. She indicated
+      the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s report,
+      rapidly studied and denounced. &ldquo;For what do you take that little picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble went over and looked. &ldquo;Why, don&rsquo;t you know? It&rsquo;s a jolly
+      little Vandermeer of Delft.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a base imitation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked again, but appeared at a loss. &ldquo;An imitation of Vandermeer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made the young man ring out: &ldquo;Then Mr. Bender&rsquo;s doubly dangerous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Singly is enough!&rdquo; Lady Grace laughed. &ldquo;But you see you <i>have</i> to
+      speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, to <i>him</i>, rather, after that&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll just take me to
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes then,&rdquo; she said; but even while she spoke Lord John, who had
+      returned, by the terrace, from his quarter of an hour passed with Lady
+      Imber, was there practically between them; a fact that she had to notice
+      for her other visitor, to whom she was hastily reduced to naming him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship eagerly made the most of this tribute of her attention, which
+      had reached his ear; he treated it&mdash;her &ldquo;Oh Lord John!&rdquo;&mdash;as a
+      direct greeting. &ldquo;Ah Lady Grace! I came back particularly to find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could but explain her predicament. &ldquo;I was taking Mr. Crimble to see
+      the pictures.&rdquo; And then more pointedly, as her manner had been virtually
+      an introduction of that gentleman, an introduction which Lord John&rsquo;s mere
+      noncommittal stare was as little as possible a response to: &ldquo;Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s
+      one of the quite new connoisseurs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m at the very lowest round of the ladder. But I aspire!&rdquo; Hugh
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll mount!&rdquo; said Lady Grace with friendly confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it again with gay deprecation. &ldquo;Ah, if by that time there&rsquo;s
+      anything left here to mount <i>on!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won&rsquo;t have
+      been able to carry off.&rdquo; To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a helpful
+      spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had the air of
+      wishing to preserve his detachment: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s to Lord John that we owe Mr.
+      Bender&rsquo;s acquaintance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. &ldquo;Then do you
+      happen to know, sir, what your friend means to <i>do</i> with his spoil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a
+      commercially calculating or interested one. &ldquo;Oh, not sell it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then ship it to New York?&rdquo; the inquirer pursued, defining himself somehow
+      as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed
+      relish for being able to displease Lady Grace&rsquo;s odd guest by large assent.
+      &ldquo;As fast as ever he can&mdash;and you can land things there <i>now</i>,
+      can&rsquo;t you? in three or four days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say. But can&rsquo;t he be induced to have a little mercy?&rdquo; Hugh
+      sturdily pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John pushed out his lips. &ldquo;A &lsquo;little&rsquo;? How much do you want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender&rsquo;s hand than you can empty his
+      purse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the Despoilers!&rdquo; said Crimble with strong expression. &ldquo;But it&rsquo;s <i>we</i>,&rdquo;
+       he added, &ldquo;who are base.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Base&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord John&rsquo;s surprise was apparently genuine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To want only to &lsquo;do business,&rsquo; I mean, with our treasures, with our
+      glories.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh&rsquo;s words exhaled such a sense of peril as to draw at once Lady Grace.
+      &ldquo;Ah, but if we&rsquo;re above that <i>here</i>, as you know&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood smilingly corrected and contrite. &ldquo;Of course I know&mdash;but you
+      must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all, won&rsquo;t
+      you? the Moretto of Brescia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, didn&rsquo;t you tell me yourself?&rdquo; It went on between them for the moment
+      quite as if there had been no Lord John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Probably, yes,&rdquo; she recalled; &ldquo;so how I must have swaggered!&rdquo; After which
+      she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of urgency.
+      &ldquo;Will you also come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He confessed to a difficulty&mdash;which his whole face begged her also to
+      take account of. &ldquo;I hoped you&rsquo;d be at leisure&mdash;for something I&rsquo;ve so
+      at heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had its effect; she took a rapid decision and turned persuasively to
+      Crimble&mdash;for whom, in like manner, there must have been something in
+      <i>her</i> face. &ldquo;Let Mr. Bender himself then show you. And there are
+      things in the library too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, there are things in the library.&rdquo; Lord John, happy in his gained
+      advantage and addressing Hugh from the strong ground of an initiation
+      already complete, quite sped him on the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh clearly made no attempt to veil the penetration with which he was
+      moved to look from one of these counsellors to the other, though with a
+      ready &ldquo;Thank-you!&rdquo; for Lady Grace he the next instant started in pursuit
+      of Mr. Bender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend seems remarkably hot!&rdquo; Lord John remarked to his young
+      hostess as soon as they had been left together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has cycled twenty miles. And indeed,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;he does appear to
+      care for what he cares for!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion then, during a moment&rsquo;s silence, might have been noting the
+      emphasis of her assent. &ldquo;Have you known him long?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor seen him often?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only once&mdash;till now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lord John with another pause. But he soon proceeded. &ldquo;Let us
+      leave him then to cool! I haven&rsquo;t cycled twenty miles, but I&rsquo;ve motored
+      forty very much in the hope of <i>this</i>, Lady Grace&mdash;the chance of
+      being able to assure you that I too care very much for what I care for.&rdquo;
+       To which he added on an easier note, as to carry off a slight awkwardness
+      while she only waited: &ldquo;You certainly mustn&rsquo;t let yourself&mdash;between
+      us all&mdash;be worked to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, such days as this&mdash;I&rdquo; She made light enough of her burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They don&rsquo;t come often to <i>me</i> at least, Lady Grace! I hadn&rsquo;t grasped
+      in advance the scale of your fête,&rdquo; he went on; &ldquo;but since I&rsquo;ve the great
+      luck to find you alone&mdash;!&rdquo; He paused for breath, however, before the
+      full sequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She helped him out as through common kindness, but it was a trifle
+      colourless. &ldquo;Alone or in company, Lord John, I&rsquo;m always very glad to see
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that assurance helps me to wonder if you don&rsquo;t perhaps gently guess
+      what it is I want to say.&rdquo; This time indeed she left him to his wonder, so
+      that he had to support himself. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve tried, all considerately&mdash;these
+      three months&mdash;to let you see for yourself how I feel. I feel very
+      strongly, Lady Grace; so that at last&rdquo;&mdash;and his impatient sincerity
+      took after another instant the jump&mdash;&ldquo;well, I regularly worship you.
+      You&rsquo;re my absolute ideal. I think of you the whole time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of pretty ribbon.
+      &ldquo;Are you sure you <i>know</i> me enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!&rdquo; Nothing now at least
+      could have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistake
+      showed in her smile he followed it up. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t what you rather mean that
+      you haven&rsquo;t cared sufficiently to know <i>me?</i> If so, that can be
+      little by little mended, Lady Grace.&rdquo; He was in fact altogether gallant
+      about it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but
+      I defy you to find a limit to my possible devotion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. &ldquo;I believe you&rsquo;d be
+      very good to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t <i>that</i> something to start with?&rdquo;&mdash;he fairly pounced
+      on it. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do any blest thing in life you like, I&rsquo;ll accept any
+      condition you impose, if you&rsquo;ll only tell me you see your way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t I have a little more first to see yours?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;When you
+      say you&rsquo;ll do anything in life I like, isn&rsquo;t there anything you yourself
+      want strongly enough to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. &ldquo;Anything that will
+      make money, you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make money or make reputation&mdash;or even just make the time pass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?&rdquo; If that was her
+      meaning he could show after an instant that he didn&rsquo;t fear it. &ldquo;Well, your
+      father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me to understand
+      that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I&rsquo;ve noticed, as you
+      doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs a fellow&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the obvious moral for her to take up&mdash;which she did, but all
+      interrogatively. &ldquo;The fellow at once comes in for something awfully good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t in the least mind your laughing at me,&rdquo; Lord John returned, &ldquo;for
+      when I put him the question of the lift he&rsquo;d give me by speaking to you
+      first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty in which he
+      leaves you, and yet which doesn&rsquo;t come&mdash;take my word!&rdquo; said the young
+      man sagely&mdash;&ldquo;from his being at all indifferent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered&mdash;&ldquo;father isn&rsquo;t indifferent. But father&rsquo;s &lsquo;great&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great indeed!&rdquo;&mdash;her friend took it as with full comprehension. This
+      appeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought. &ldquo;Too
+      great for <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he makes me feel&mdash;even as his daughter&mdash;my extreme
+      comparative smallness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a <i>grand
+      seigneur</i>, and a serious one&mdash;that&rsquo;s what he is: the very type and
+      model of it, down to the ground. So you can imagine,&rdquo; the young man said,
+      &ldquo;what he makes me feel&mdash;most of all when he&rsquo;s so awfully good-natured
+      to me. His being as &lsquo;great&rsquo; as you say and yet backing me&mdash;such as I
+      am!&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t <i>that</i> strike you as a good note for me, the best
+      you could possibly require? For he really <i>would</i> like what I propose
+      to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might have been noting, while she thought, that he had risen to
+      ingenuity, to fineness, on the wings of his argument; under the effect of
+      which her reply had the air of a concession. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;he would like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he <i>has</i> spoken to you?&rdquo; her suitor eagerly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t needed&mdash;he has ways of letting one know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, he has ways; all his own&mdash;like everything else he has.
+      He&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She fully agreed. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s wonderful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone of it appeared somehow to shorten at once for Lord John the rest
+      of his approach to a conclusion. &ldquo;So you do see your way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah&mdash;!&rdquo; she said with a quick sad shrinkage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; her visitor hastened to explain, &ldquo;if he does put it to you as
+      the very best idea he has for you. When he does that&mdash;as I believe
+      him ready to do&mdash;will you really and fairly listen to him? I&rsquo;m
+      certain, honestly, that when you know me better&mdash;!&rdquo; His confidence in
+      short donned a bravery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been feeling this quarter of an hour,&rdquo; the girl returned, &ldquo;that I do
+      know you better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then isn&rsquo;t that all I want?&mdash;unless indeed I ought perhaps to ask
+      rather if it isn&rsquo;t all <i>you</i> do! At any rate,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;I may
+      see you again here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited a moment. &ldquo;You must have patience with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>am</i> having it But <i>after</i> your father&rsquo;s appeal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that must come first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you won&rsquo;t dodge it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him straight &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t dodge, Lord John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He admired the manner of it &ldquo;You look awfully handsome as you say so&mdash;and
+      you see what <i>that</i> does to me.&rdquo; As to attentuate a little the
+      freedom of which he went on: &ldquo;May I fondly hope that if Lady Imber too
+      should wish to put in another word for me&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will I listen to her?&rdquo;&mdash;it brought Lady Grace straight down. &ldquo;No,
+      Lord John, let me tell you at once that I&rsquo;ll do nothing of the sort
+      Kitty&rsquo;s quite another affair, and I never listen to her a bit more than I
+      can help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John appeared to feel, on this, that he mustn&rsquo;t too easily, in
+      honour, abandon a person who had presented herself to him as an ally. &ldquo;Ah,
+      you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself&mdash;in his
+      looser moments!&mdash;takes pleasure in what she says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young woman&rsquo;s eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, had no
+      mercy for its extreme feebleness. &ldquo;If you mean that she&rsquo;s the most
+      reckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as when
+      she&rsquo;s at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out her
+      interest, she has learnt to &lsquo;get round&rsquo; him till he only sees through her
+      eyes&mdash;if you mean <i>that</i> I understand you perfectly. But even if
+      you think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it&rsquo;s not
+      on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his
+      youngest is moved to have most confidence in <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in
+      his face; but then recovering himself: &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t perhaps an absolutely
+      boundless confidence&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In any one in the world but himself?&rdquo;&mdash;she had taken him straight
+      up. &ldquo;He hasn&rsquo;t indeed, and that&rsquo;s what we must come to; so that even if he
+      likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won&rsquo;t be because
+      you are right about your being nice, but because <i>he</i> is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he
+      isn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace was indeed sure. &ldquo;Absolutely&mdash;if he had begun so! He began
+      so with Kitty&mdash;that is with allowing her everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John appeared struck. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;and he still allows her two
+      thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad to hear it&mdash;she has never told me how much!&rdquo; the girl
+      undisguisedly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then perhaps I oughtn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;&mdash;he glowed with the light of contrition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can&rsquo;t help it now,&rdquo; his companion remarked with amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that he ought to allow <i>you</i> as much?&rdquo; Lord John inquired.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re right, and that he will,&rdquo; he continued quite as in good
+      faith; &ldquo;but I want you to understand that I don&rsquo;t care in the least what
+      it may be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very good to say so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that
+      they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a
+      third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them
+      was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question.
+      &ldquo;Will you let <i>him</i> tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?&mdash;and
+      then let me come back and have it from you again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace&rsquo;s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person
+      by whom they were now joined. &ldquo;Lord John desires you should tell me,
+      father, how good you think him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Good,&rsquo; my dear?&mdash;good for what?&rdquo; said Lord Theign a trifle
+      absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel I must ask <i>him</i> to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall give him a chance&mdash;as I should particularly like you to
+      go back and deal with those overwhelming children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, they don&rsquo;t overwhelm <i>you</i>, father!&rdquo;&mdash;the girl put it with
+      some point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean to say I overwhelmed <i>them</i>, I dare say I did,&rdquo; he
+      replied&mdash;&ldquo;from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred
+      painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for
+      the time: I pumped advice&mdash;oh <i>such</i> advice!&mdash;and they held
+      the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his
+      back. The bucket, under the stream&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was bound to overflow?&rdquo; Lady Grace suggested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not
+      unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,&rdquo; Lord
+      Theign insisted, &ldquo;go and deal with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter&rsquo;s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. &ldquo;You work people
+      up, father, and then leave others to let them down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The two things,&rdquo; he promptly replied, &ldquo;require different natures.&rdquo; To
+      which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of
+      harshness, &ldquo;Go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a
+      certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and
+      resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The nature that <i>can</i> let you down&mdash;I rather like it, you
+      know!&rdquo; Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were
+      perhaps just slightly rash words&mdash;his companion gave him so sharp a
+      look as the two were left together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the
+      impression his daughter appeared to have given him. &ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t want to
+      go?&rdquo; And then before Lord John could reply: &ldquo;What the deuce is the matter
+      with her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took his time. &ldquo;I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young man who was just with her&mdash;and whom she appears to have
+      invited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he then?&rdquo; Lord Theign demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Off there among the pictures&mdash;which he seems partly to have come
+      for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;&mdash;it made his lordship easier. &ldquo;Then he&rsquo;s all right&mdash;on
+      such a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion could none the less just wonder. &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t Lady Grace told
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That he was coming? Not that I remember.&rdquo; But Lord Theign, perceptibly
+      preoccupied, made nothing of this. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had other fish to fry, and you
+      know the freedom I allow her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend had a vivid gesture. &ldquo;My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!&rdquo;
+       With which there might well have been in Lord John&rsquo;s face a light of
+      comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained&mdash;as to show
+      himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. &ldquo;She has her friends by the
+      score&mdash;at this time of day.&rdquo; There was clearly a claim here also&mdash;to
+      <i>know</i> the time of day. &ldquo;But in the matter of friends where, by the
+      way, is your own&mdash;of whom I&rsquo;ve but just heard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they&rsquo;ll have met and taken care
+      of each other.&rdquo; Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of
+      Lord John&rsquo;s difficulties. &ldquo;I mustn&rsquo;t appear to Bender to have failed him;
+      but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my
+      opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken
+      to Lady Grace. It hasn&rsquo;t been perhaps,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;quite the pick of a
+      chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I&rsquo;m not too fondly mistaken,
+      at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I&rsquo;ve led her to
+      expect&mdash;for our case&mdash;that you&rsquo;ll be so good, without loss of
+      time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without loss, you mean, of&mdash;a&mdash;my daughter&rsquo;s time?&rdquo; Lord
+      Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations&mdash;yet
+      with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never
+      forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his
+      public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that
+      had presently dropped&mdash;to the effect, we should have guessed, of his
+      appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His
+      appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects
+      charming&mdash;with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost
+      suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him,
+      his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to
+      deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a
+      passion for simplicity&mdash;simplicity, above all, of relation with you,
+      and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience
+      of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of
+      decent ease he would, confound you, &ldquo;sink&rdquo; a hundred other attributes&mdash;or
+      the recognition at least and the formulation of them&mdash;that you might
+      abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly
+      vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He
+      sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his
+      consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and
+      amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference
+      in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This
+      would be quite his religion, you might infer&mdash;to cause his hands to
+      ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an
+      unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of
+      ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so
+      shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a
+      certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not
+      measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but
+      by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming
+      expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so
+      presented to an ideal privately invoked&mdash;that of his establishing in
+      the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short
+      perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would
+      mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at
+      the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than
+      anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin&mdash;in
+      fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his
+      lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes&mdash;<i>that</i>, of course, in all propriety,&rdquo; his companion
+      has meanwhile replied to it. &ldquo;But I was thinking a little, you understand,
+      of the importance of our own time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the
+      comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers
+      even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to
+      &ldquo;understand&rdquo; in this particular connection&mdash;it would be his
+      familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work
+      for him. &ldquo;&lsquo;Our own&rsquo; in the sense of yours and mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of yours and mine and Lady Imber&rsquo;s, yes&mdash;and a good bit, last not
+      least, in that of my watching and waiting mother&rsquo;s.&rdquo; This struck no prompt
+      spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: &ldquo;The
+      last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old
+      frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the
+      whole question, she <i>is</i>, don&rsquo;t you know? What she put to me&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking <i>all</i> questions
+      straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don&rsquo;t we, decidedly, take up
+      practically her very handsome offer&mdash;&lsquo;very handsome&rsquo; being, I mean,
+      what <i>she</i> calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as
+      rather decent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. &ldquo;Kitty has of course
+      rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on
+      me&mdash;successfully!&mdash;for everything, and it suits her down to the
+      ground. She pays her beastly debt&mdash;that is, I mean to say,&rdquo; and he
+      took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, &ldquo;discharges
+      her obligations&mdash;by her sister&rsquo;s fair hand; not to mention a few
+      other trifles for which I naturally provide.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but
+      briefly at a loss. &ldquo;Of course we take into account, don&rsquo;t we? not only the
+      fact of my mother&rsquo;s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering)
+      that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed
+      readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Over and above Kitty&rsquo;s release from her damnable payment?&rdquo;&mdash;Lord
+      Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. &ldquo;Of
+      course we take <i>everything</i> into account&mdash;or I shouldn&rsquo;t, my
+      dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose
+      aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there&rsquo;s nothing, you easily
+      conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your
+      family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn&rsquo;t be quite as sure of
+      by just staying in her own. The Duchess&rsquo;s idea, at any rate, if I&rsquo;ve
+      followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve
+      thousand; with the condition&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John was already all there. &ldquo;Definitely, yes, of your settling the
+      equivalent on Lady Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself,
+      I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time,
+      am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his
+      friend&rsquo;s general resources, to consider that question seriously. &ldquo;Surely
+      you can have no difficulty whatever&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&mdash;when you can see for yourself that I&rsquo;ve had this year to
+      let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have <i>liked</i>
+      to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the
+      very much lower figure of Kitty&rsquo;s horrid incubus?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but the inducement and the <i>quid pro quo</i>,&rdquo; Lord John brightly
+      indicated, &ldquo;are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only
+      have removed the incubus&mdash;which, I grant you, she must and you must
+      feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber <i>and</i> marry Lady
+      Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has
+      just expressed&mdash;to himself&mdash;a very kind and very high opinion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has expressed a very high opinion of you?&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign scarce
+      glowed with credulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the younger man held his ground. &ldquo;She has told me she thoroughly likes
+      me and that&mdash;though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things&mdash;she
+      thinks me perfectly charming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;what does
+      she want more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She very possibly wants nothing&mdash;but I&rsquo;m to that beastly degree, you
+      see,&rdquo; his visitor patiently explained, &ldquo;in the cleft stick of my fearfully
+      positive mother&rsquo;s wants. Those are her &lsquo;terms,&rsquo; and I don&rsquo;t mind saying
+      that they&rsquo;re most disagreeable to me&mdash;I quite hate &lsquo;em: there! Only I
+      think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn&rsquo;t touch &lsquo;em with a long
+      pole if my personal feeling&mdash;in respect to Lady Grace&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t so
+      immensely enlisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I assure you I&rsquo;d chuck &lsquo;em out of window, my boy, if I didn&rsquo;t believe
+      you&rsquo;d be really good to her,&rdquo; Lord Theign returned with the properest
+      spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It only encouraged his companion. &ldquo;You <i>will</i> just tell her then, now
+      and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This appeal required a moment&mdash;a longer look at him. &ldquo;You truly hold
+      that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your
+      job?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the conviction I entertain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign thought again. &ldquo;Well, even if your conviction&rsquo;s just, that
+      still doesn&rsquo;t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of
+      the least use for me to fumble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Lord John laughed, &ldquo;when a man has such a tremendous assortment of
+      breeches&mdash;!&rdquo; He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught
+      the great vista of the open rooms. &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a question of pockets&mdash;and
+      what&rsquo;s <i>in</i> &lsquo;em&mdash;here precisely is my man!&rdquo; This personage had
+      come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of
+      the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John&rsquo;s welcome was warm.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of
+      joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this
+      assistance. &ldquo;Happy to meet you&mdash;especially in your beautiful home,
+      Lord Theign.&rdquo; To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood
+      good-humouredly passive to his approach: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been round, by your kind
+      permission and the light of nature, and haven&rsquo;t required support; though
+      if I had there&rsquo;s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any
+      amount.&rdquo; Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand
+      this contributory figure. &ldquo;A young, spare, nervous gentleman with
+      eye-glasses&mdash;I guess he&rsquo;s an author. A friend of yours too?&rdquo; he asked
+      of Lord John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was prompt and emphatic. &ldquo;No, the gentleman is no friend at all
+      of mine, Mr. Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend of my daughter&rsquo;s,&rdquo; Lord Theign easily explained. &ldquo;I hope they&rsquo;re
+      looking after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and
+      were so good as to move something,&rdquo; Mr. Bender conscientiously added, &ldquo;so
+      that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.
+      &ldquo;Up on a chair? I say!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender took another view. &ldquo;Why, I got right up myself&mdash;a little
+      more and I&rsquo;d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know&mdash;&ldquo;in that
+      Moretto.&rdquo; And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.
+      &ldquo;I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid
+      Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too&mdash;but
+      it didn&rsquo;t lead to our moving any more furniture.&rdquo; On which he paused as to
+      enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host&rsquo;s reassurance. &ldquo;It <i>has</i>
+      yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you
+      prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign met Mr. Bender&rsquo;s eyes while this inquirer left these few
+      portentous words to speak for themselves. &ldquo;To the effect that I part to
+      you with &lsquo;The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge&rsquo;? No, Mr. Bender, such a
+      proposition would leave me intensely cold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. &ldquo;My dear Bender, I <i>envy</i>
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you don&rsquo;t envy me,&rdquo; his friend serenely replied, &ldquo;as much as I
+      envy Lord Theign.&rdquo; And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to
+      face each other searchingly and firmly: &ldquo;What I allude to is an overture
+      of a strong and simple stamp&mdash;such as perhaps would shed a softer
+      light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I&rsquo;ve had
+      some experience of first shocks, and I&rsquo;d be glad to meet you as man to
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no
+      irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less
+      evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. &ldquo;As rich man to poor
+      man is how I&rsquo;m to understand it? For me to meet <i>you</i>,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I
+      should have to be tempted&mdash;and I&rsquo;m not even temptable. So there we
+      are,&rdquo; he blandly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John.
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,&rsquo; Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of
+      one of those great family trees of which respectable people don&rsquo;t lop off
+      the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they
+      so much enjoy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. &ldquo;Then if
+      they don&rsquo;t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors
+      bought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,&rdquo; Lord Theign
+      asked, &ldquo;that they&rsquo;re definitely not bought at Dedborough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, &ldquo;you talk as if it were my
+      interest to be <i>reasonable</i>&mdash;which shows how little you
+      understand. I&rsquo;d be ashamed&mdash;with the lovely ideas I have&mdash;if I
+      didn&rsquo;t make you kick.&rdquo; And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed
+      his faith. &ldquo;Well, I guess I can wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from
+      which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more
+      sustained look to keep straying toward their host. &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s bound to
+      <i>have</i> something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his
+      friend&rsquo;s mute pressure. &ldquo;&lsquo;Something&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something, Mr. Bender?&rdquo; Lord John insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. &ldquo;Why, have <i>you</i> an
+      interest, Lord John?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was,
+      referred it to Lord Theign. &ldquo;Do you authorise me to speak&mdash;a little&mdash;as
+      if I have an interest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign gave the appeal&mdash;and the speaker&mdash;a certain
+      attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. &ldquo;My
+      dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t mean at your expense,&rdquo; Lord John laughed&mdash;&ldquo;I mean at Mr.
+      Bender&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, go ahead, Lord John,&rdquo; said that gentleman, always easy, but always
+      too, as you would have felt, aware of everything&mdash;&ldquo;go ahead, but
+      don&rsquo;t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn&rsquo;t already exist
+      in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here&mdash;has in fact
+      been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I&rsquo;ve got some
+      peculiarity, for it doesn&rsquo;t seem as if the thing could be done. If the
+      germ is there, on the other hand,&rdquo; Mr. Bender conceded, &ldquo;it develops
+      independently of all encouragement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign.
+      &ldquo;He thinks I really mean to <i>offer</i> him something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from
+      the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness,
+      toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to
+      light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing
+      so that he made the remark: &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes me the more sorry, sir,&rdquo; said his visitor, &ldquo;not to have been
+      enough for <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I risk it, at any rate,&rdquo; Lord John went on&mdash;&ldquo;I put you, Bender, the
+      question of whether you wouldn&rsquo;t Move,&rsquo; as you say, to acquire that
+      Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s large face had a commensurate gaze. &ldquo;As I say? I haven&rsquo;t said
+      anything of the sort!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you do &lsquo;love&rsquo; you know,&rdquo; Lord John slightly overgrimaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t when I don&rsquo;t want to. I&rsquo;m different from most people&mdash;I can
+      love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto,&rdquo; Mr. Bender
+      continued, &ldquo;is that it ain&rsquo;t what I&rsquo;m after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His &ldquo;after&rdquo; had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack on
+      the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord
+      John&rsquo;s speaking again across to their host. &ldquo;The worst he can do for me,
+      you see, is to refuse it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling
+      about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had
+      but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the very first time
+      in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or
+      anything else in it, has been offered&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn&rsquo;t dropped Mr. Bender
+      mightn&rsquo;t have been markedly impressed. &ldquo;Then it must be the very first
+      time such an offer has failed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it isn&rsquo;t that we in the least press it!&rdquo; Lord Theign quite naturally
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I beg your pardon&mdash;I press it very hard!&rdquo; And Lord John, as
+      taking from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went
+      so far as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion&rsquo;s
+      native form. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you don&rsquo;t feel the interest of that
+      Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. &ldquo;Well, if you had
+      seen me up on that chair you&rsquo;d have thought I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stepped down quite impressed with that young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble?&rdquo;&mdash;it came after an instant to Lord John. &ldquo;With <i>his</i>
+      opinion, really? Then I hope he&rsquo;s aware of the picture&rsquo;s value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better ask him,&rdquo; Mr. Bender observed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we don&rsquo;t depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!&rdquo; Lord John returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. &ldquo;Are you aware of the value
+      yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their
+      entertainer. &ldquo;Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared, a bit
+      extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of hovering
+      aloof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That question needn&rsquo;t trouble us&mdash;when I see how much Mr. Bender
+      himself knows about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at.&rdquo; And then
+      as the others waited, &ldquo;Ten thousand,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten thousand?&rdquo; The owner of the work showed no emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lord John again in Mr. Bender&rsquo;s style, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the matter
+      with ten thousand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject of his gay tribute considered. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing the matter
+      with ten thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;is there anything the matter with the
+      picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir&mdash;I guess there is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave an upward push to his lordship&rsquo;s eyebrows. &ldquo;But what in the world&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s just the question!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyebrows continued to rise. &ldquo;Does he pretend there&rsquo;s a question of
+      whether it <i>is</i> a Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what he was up there trying to find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if the value&rsquo;s, according to himself, ten thousand&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a fine work anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the matter with <i>you</i>,
+      Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That gentleman was perfectly clear. &ldquo;The matter with me, Lord Theign, is
+      that I&rsquo;ve no use for a ten thousand picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;No use?&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;the expression had an oddity. &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s it your idea
+      to do with such things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; Mr. Bender explained, &ldquo;that a picture of that rank is not what
+      I&rsquo;m after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The figure,&rdquo; said his noble host&mdash;speaking thus, under pressure,
+      commercially&mdash;&ldquo;is beyond what you see your way to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lord John had jumped at the truth. &ldquo;The matter with Mr. Bender is that
+      he sees his way much further.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Further?&rdquo; their companion echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. &ldquo;Well, there would be no
+      difficulty about <i>that</i>, I think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said his guest, &ldquo;you know the basis, sir, on which I&rsquo;m ready to
+      pay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the basis then of the Sir Joshua,&rdquo; Lord John inquired, &ldquo;how far would
+      you go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety
+      by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d go
+      all the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants, you see,&rdquo; Lord John elucidated, &ldquo;an <i>ideally</i> expensive
+      thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant
+      spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. &ldquo;Then why
+      shouldn&rsquo;t I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you can&rsquo;t do violence to <i>that</i> master&rsquo;s natural modesty,&rdquo;
+       Mr. Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at
+      this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once
+      supplied a further light. &ldquo;I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble had come back from his voyage of discovery, and it was
+      visible as he stood there flushed and quite radiant that he had caught in
+      his approach Lord Theign&rsquo;s last inquiry and Mr. Bender&rsquo;s reply to it. You
+      would have imputed to him on the spot the lively possession of a new idea,
+      the sustaining sense of a message important enough to justify his
+      irruption. He looked from one to the other of the three men, scattered a
+      little by the sight of him, but attached eyes of recognition then to Lord
+      Theign&rsquo;s, whom he remained an instant longer communicatively smiling at.
+      After which, as you might have gathered, he all confidently plunged,
+      taking up the talk where the others had left it. &ldquo;I should say, Lord
+      Theign, if you&rsquo;ll allow me, in regard to what you appear to have been
+      discussing, that it depends a good deal on just that question&mdash;of
+      what your Moretto, at any rate, may be presumed or proved to &lsquo;be.&rsquo; Let me
+      thank you,&rdquo; he cheerfully went on, &ldquo;for your kind leave to go over your
+      treasures.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The personage he so addressed was, as we know, nothing if not generally
+      affable; yet if that was just then apparent it was through a shade of
+      coolness for the slightly heated familiarity of so plain, or at least so
+      free, a young man in eye-glasses, now for the first time definitely
+      apprehended. &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ve scarcely &lsquo;treasures&rsquo;&mdash;but I&rsquo;ve some things of
+      interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh, however, entering the opulent circle, as it were, clearly took
+      account of no breath of a chill. &ldquo;I think possible, my lord, that you&rsquo;ve a
+      great treasure&mdash;if you&rsquo;ve really so high a rarity as a splendid
+      Manto-vano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A &lsquo;Mantovano&rsquo;?&rdquo; You wouldn&rsquo;t have been sure that his lordship didn&rsquo;t
+      pronounce the word for the first time in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There have been supposed to be only <i>seven</i> real examples about the
+      world; so that if by an extraordinary chance you find yourself the
+      possessor of a magnificent eighth&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lord John had already broken in. &ldquo;Why, there you <i>are</i>, Mr.
+      Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Bender, with whom I&rsquo;ve made acquaintance,&rdquo; Hugh returned, &ldquo;was
+      there as it began to work in me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That your Moretto, Lord Theign&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender took their informant up&mdash;&ldquo;isn&rsquo;t,
+      after all, a Moretto at all.&rdquo; And he continued amusedly to Hugh: &ldquo;It began
+      to work in you, sir, like very strong drink!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I understand you to suggest,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked of the startling young
+      man, &ldquo;that my precious picture isn&rsquo;t genuine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Hugh knew exactly what he suggested. &ldquo;As a picture, Lord Theign, as
+      a great portrait, one of the most genuine things in Europe. But it strikes
+      me as probable that from far back&mdash;for reasons!&mdash;there has been
+      a wrong attribution; that the work has been, in other words,
+      traditionally, obstinately miscalled. It has passed for a Moretto, and at
+      first I quite took it for one; but I suddenly, as I looked and looked and
+      saw and saw, began to doubt, and now I know <i>why</i> I doubted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had during this speech kept his eyes on the ground; but he
+      raised them to Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s almost palpitating presence for the remark:
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to say that I hope you&rsquo;ve some very good grounds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve three or four, Lord Theign; they seem to me of the best&mdash;as
+      yet. They made me wonder and wonder&mdash;and then light splendidly
+      broke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship didn&rsquo;t stint his attention. &ldquo;Reflected, you mean, from <i>other</i>
+      Mantovanos&mdash;that I don&rsquo;t know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean from those I know myself,&rdquo; said Hugh; &ldquo;and I mean from fine
+      analogies with one in particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Analogies that in all these years, these centuries, have so remarkably
+      not been noticed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Hugh competently explained, &ldquo;they&rsquo;re a sort of thing the very
+      sense of, the value and meaning of, are a highly modern&mdash;in fact a
+      quite recent growth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John at this professed with cordiality that he at least quite
+      understood. &ldquo;Oh, we know a lot more about our pictures and things than
+      ever our ancestors did!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess it&rsquo;s enough for <i>me</i>,&rdquo; Mr. Bender contributed, &ldquo;that
+      your ancestors knew enough to get &lsquo;em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that doesn&rsquo;t go so far,&rdquo; cried Hugh, &ldquo;unless we ourselves know enough
+      to keep &lsquo;em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words appeared to quicken in a manner Lord Theign&rsquo;s view of the
+      speaker. &ldquo;Were <i>your</i> ancestors, Mr. Crimble, great collectors?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Arrested, it might be, in his general assurance, Hugh wondered and smiled.
+      &ldquo;Mine&mdash;collectors? Oh, I&rsquo;m afraid I haven&rsquo;t any&mdash;to speak of.
+      Only it has seemed to me for a long time,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that on that head we
+      should all feel together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign looked for a moment as if these were rather large
+      presumptions; then he put them in their place a little curtly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s one
+      thing to keep our possessions for ourselves&mdash;it&rsquo;s another to keep
+      them for other people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Hugh good-humouredly returned, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m perhaps not so absolutely sure
+      of myself, if you press me, as that I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be glad of a higher and
+      wiser opinion&mdash;I mean than my own. It would be awfully interesting,
+      if you&rsquo;ll allow me to say so, to have the judgment of one or two of the
+      great men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not yourself, Mr. Crimble, one of the great men?&rdquo; his host asked
+      with tempered irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess he&rsquo;s going to be, anyhow,&rdquo; Mr. Bender cordially struck in;
+      &ldquo;and this remarkable exhibition of intelligence may just let him loose on
+      the world, mayn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mr. Bender!&rdquo;&mdash;and Hugh obviously tried to look neither
+      elated nor snubbed. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve too much still to learn, but I&rsquo;m learning every
+      day, and I shall have learnt immensely this afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well at my expense, however,&rdquo; Lord Theign laughed, &ldquo;if you
+      demolish a name we&rsquo;ve held for generations so dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may have held the name dear, my lord,&rdquo; his young critic answered;
+      &ldquo;but my whole point is that, if I&rsquo;m right, you&rsquo;ve held the picture itself
+      cheap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because a Mantovano,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;is so much greater a value?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh met his eyes a moment &ldquo;Are you talking of values pecuniary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What values are <i>not</i> pecuniary?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh might, during his hesitation, have been imagined to stand off a
+      little from the question. &ldquo;Well, some things have in a higher degree that
+      one, and some have the associational or the factitious, and some the clear
+      artistic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And some,&rdquo; Mr. Bender opined, &ldquo;have them <i>all</i>&mdash;in the highest
+      degree. But what you mean,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;is that a Mantovano would come
+      higher under the hammer than a Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sir,&rdquo; the young man returned, &ldquo;there aren&rsquo;t any, as I&rsquo;ve just
+      stated, <i>to</i> &lsquo;come.&rsquo; I account&mdash;or I easily can&mdash;for every
+      one of the very small number.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you consider that you account for this one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe I shall if you&rsquo;ll give me time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, time!&rdquo; Mr. Bender impatiently sighed. &ldquo;But we&rsquo;ll give you all we&rsquo;ve
+      got&mdash;only I guess it isn&rsquo;t much.&rdquo; And he appeared freely to invite
+      their companions to join in this estimate. They listened to him, however,
+      they watched him, for the moment, but in silence, and with the next he had
+      gone on: &ldquo;How much higher&mdash;if your idea is correct about it&mdash;would
+      Lord Theign&rsquo;s picture come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh turned to that nobleman. &ldquo;Does Mr. Bender mean come to <i>him</i>, my
+      lord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign looked again hard at Hugh, and then harder than he had done
+      yet at his other invader. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know <i>what</i> Mr. Bender means!&rdquo;
+       With which he turned off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I mean that it would come higher to me than to any one! But
+      how <i>much</i> higher?&rdquo; the American continued to Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much higher to <i>you?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I can size <i>that</i>. How much higher as a Mantovano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unmistakably&mdash;for us at least&mdash;our young man was gaining time;
+      he had the instinct of circumspection and delay. &ldquo;To any one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Than as a Moretto?&rdquo; Hugh continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It even acted on Lord John&rsquo;s nerves. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re talking about&mdash;really!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hugh still took his ease; as if, with his eyes first on Bender and
+      then on Lord Theign, whose back was practically presented, he were
+      covertly studying signs. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he presently said, &ldquo;in view of the very
+      great interest combined with the very great rarity, more than&mdash;ah
+      more than can be estimated off-hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made Lord Theign turn round. &ldquo;But a fine Moretto has a very great
+      rarity and a very great interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;but not on the whole the same amount of either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not on the whole the same amount of either!&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender
+      judiciously echoed it. &ldquo;But how,&rdquo; he freely pursued, &ldquo;are you going to
+      find out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have I your permission, Lord Theign,&rdquo; Hugh brightly asked, &ldquo;to attempt to
+      find out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question produced on his lordship&rsquo;s part a visible, a natural anxiety.
+      &ldquo;What would it be your idea then to <i>do</i> with my property?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing at all here&mdash;it could all be done, I think, at Verona. What
+      besets, what quite haunts me,&rdquo; Hugh explained, &ldquo;is the vivid image of a
+      Mantovano&mdash;one of the glories of the short list&mdash;in a private
+      collection in that place. The conviction grows in me that the two
+      portraits must be of the same original. In fact I&rsquo;ll bet my head,&rdquo; the
+      young man quite ardently wound up, &ldquo;that the wonderful subject of the
+      Verona picture, a very great person clearly, is none other than the very
+      great person of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had listened with interest. &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t he be that and yet from
+      another hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t another hand&rdquo;&mdash;oh Hugh was quite positive. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the hand
+      of the very same painter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you prove it&rsquo;s the same?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only by the most intimate internal evidence, I admit&mdash;and evidence
+      that of course has to be estimated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then who,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;is to estimate it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was all ready&mdash;&ldquo;will you let Pap-pendick, one of
+      the first authorities in Europe, a good friend of mine, in fact more or
+      less my master, and who is generally to be found at Brussels? I happen to
+      know he knows your picture&mdash;he once spoke to me of it; and he&rsquo;ll go
+      and look again at the Verona one, he&rsquo;ll go and judge our issue, if I apply
+      to him, in the light of certain new tips that I shall be able to give
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign appeared to wonder. &ldquo;If you &lsquo;apply&rsquo; to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a shot, I believe, if I ask it of him&mdash;as a service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A service to <i>you?</i> He&rsquo;ll be very obliging,&rdquo; his lordship smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve obliged <i>him!</i>&rdquo; Hugh readily retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The obligation will be to we&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign spoke more formally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the satisfaction,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;will be to all of us. The things
+      Pappendick has seen he intensely, ineffaceably keeps in mind, to every
+      detail; so that he&rsquo;ll tell me&mdash;as no one else really can&mdash;if the
+      Verona man is <i>your</i> man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But then,&rdquo; asked Mr. Bender, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve got to believe anyway what he says?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The market,&rdquo; said Lord John with emphasis, &ldquo;would have to believe it&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; Hugh returned lightly, &ldquo;the market will have nothing to do with it,
+      I hope; but I think you&rsquo;ll feel when he has spoken that you really know
+      where you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender couldn&rsquo;t doubt of that. &ldquo;Oh, if he gives us a bigger thing we
+      won&rsquo;t complain. Only, how long will it take him to get there? I want him
+      to start right away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll be deeply interested&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We <i>may</i>&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender took it straight up&mdash;&ldquo;get news next
+      week?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh addressed his reply to Lord Theign; it was already a little too much
+      as if he and the American between them were snatching the case from that
+      possessor&rsquo;s hands. &ldquo;The day I hear from Pappendick you shall have a full
+      report. And,&rdquo; he conscientiously added, &ldquo;if I&rsquo;m proved to have been
+      unfortunately wrong&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship easily pointed the moral. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have caused me some
+      inconvenience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I shall,&rdquo; the young man unreservedly agreed&mdash;&ldquo;like a
+      wanton meddling ass!&rdquo; His candour, his freedom had decidedly a note of
+      their own. &ldquo;But my conviction, after those moments with your picture, was
+      too strong for me not to speak&mdash;and, since you allow it, I face the
+      danger and risk the test.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I allow it of course in the form of business.&rdquo; This produced in Hugh a
+      certain blankness. &ldquo;&lsquo;Business&rsquo;?&rdquo; &ldquo;If I consent to the inquiry I pay for
+      the inquiry.&rdquo; Hugh demurred. &ldquo;Even if I turn out mistaken?&rdquo; &ldquo;You make me
+      in any event your proper charge.&rdquo; The young man thought again, and then as
+      for vague accommodation: &ldquo;Oh, my charge won&rsquo;t be high!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Mr. Bender protested, &ldquo;it ought to be handsome if the thing&rsquo;s marked
+      <i>up</i>!&rdquo; After which he looked at his watch. &ldquo;But I guess I&rsquo;ve got to
+      go, Lord Theign, though your lovely old Duchess&mdash;for it&rsquo;s to <i>her</i>
+      I&rsquo;ve lost my heart&mdash;does cry out for me again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find her then still there,&rdquo; Lord John observed with emphasis, but
+      with his eyes for the time on Lord Theign; &ldquo;and if you want another look
+      at her I&rsquo;ll presently come and take one too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll order your car to the garden-front,&rdquo; Lord Theign added to this;
+      &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll reach it from the saloon, but I&rsquo;ll see you again first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender glared as with the round full force of his pair of motor lamps.
+      &ldquo;Well, if you&rsquo;re ready to talk about anything, I am. Good-bye, Mr.
+      Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Mr. Bender.&rdquo; But Hugh, addressing their host while his
+      fellow-guest returned to the saloon, broke into the familiarity of
+      confidence. &ldquo;As if you <i>could</i> be ready to &lsquo;talk&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This produced on the part of the others present a mute exchange that could
+      only have denoted surprise at all the irrepressible young outsider thus
+      projected upon them took for granted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve an idea,&rdquo; said Lord John to
+      his friend, &ldquo;that you&rsquo;re quite ready to talk with <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh then, with his appetite so richly quickened, could but rejoice. &ldquo;Lady
+      Grace spoke to me of things in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find it <i>that</i> way&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign gave the indication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; said Hugh elatedly, and hastened away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, when he had gone, found relief in a quick comment. &ldquo;Very sharp,
+      no doubt&mdash;but he wants taking down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of Dedborough wouldn&rsquo;t have put it so crudely, but the young
+      expert did bring certain things home. &ldquo;The people my daughters, in the
+      exercise of a wild freedom, do pick up&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you see that all you&rsquo;ve got to do&mdash;on the question we&rsquo;re
+      dealing with&mdash;is to claim your very own wild freedom? Surely I&rsquo;m
+      right in feeling you,&rdquo; Lord John further remarked, &ldquo;to have jumped at once
+      to my idea that Bender is heaven-sent&mdash;and at what they call the
+      psychologic moment, don&rsquo;t they?&mdash;to point that moral. Why look
+      anywhere else for a sum of money that&mdash;smaller or greater&mdash;you
+      can find with perfect ease in that extraordinarily bulging pocket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, slowly pacing the hall again, threw up his hands. &ldquo;Ah, with
+      &lsquo;perfect ease&rsquo; can scarcely be said!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&mdash;when he absolutely thrusts his dirty dollars down your
+      throat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m not talking of ease to <i>him</i>,&rdquo; Lord Theign returned&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      talking of ease to myself. I shall have to make a sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not then&mdash;for so great a convenience&mdash;gallantly make it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear chap, if you want me to sell my Sir Joshua&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the horror in the words said enough, and Lord John felt its chill. &ldquo;I
+      don&rsquo;t make a point of that&mdash;God forbid! But there are other things to
+      which the objection wouldn&rsquo;t apply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see how it applies&mdash;in the case of the Moret-to&mdash;for <i>him</i>.
+      A mere Moretto,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;is too cheap&mdash;for a Yankee &lsquo;on
+      the spend.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the Mantovano wouldn&rsquo;t be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It remains to be proved that it <i>is</i> a Mantovano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lord John, &ldquo;go into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hanged if I won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; his friend broke out after a moment. &ldquo;It <i>would</i>
+      suit me. I mean&rdquo;&mdash;the explanation came after a brief intensity of
+      thought&mdash;&ldquo;the possible size of his cheque would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Lord John gaily, &ldquo;I guess there&rsquo;s no limit to the possible size
+      of his cheque!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it would suit me, it would suit me!&rdquo; the elder man, standing there,
+      audibly mused. But his air changed and a lighter question came up to him
+      as he saw his daughter reappear at the door from the terrace. &ldquo;Well, the
+      infant horde?&rdquo; he immediately put to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace came in, dutifully accounting for them. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve marched off&mdash;in
+      a huge procession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank goodness! And our friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All playing tennis,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;save those who are sitting it out.&rdquo;
+       To which she added, as to explain her return: &ldquo;Mr. Crimble has gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took upon him to say. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in the library, to which you
+      addressed him&mdash;making discoveries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not then, I hope,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;to our disadvantage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To your very great honour and glory.&rdquo; Lord John clearly valued the effect
+      he might produce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your Moretto of Brescia&mdash;do you know what it really and spendidly
+      is?&rdquo; And then as the girl, in her surprise, but wondered: &ldquo;A Mantovano,
+      neither more nor less. Ever so much more swagger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano?&rdquo; Lady Grace echoed. &ldquo;Why, how tremendously jolly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father was struck. &ldquo;Do you know the artist&mdash;of whom I had never
+      heard?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, something of the little that <i>is</i> known.&rdquo; And she rejoiced as
+      her knowledge came to her. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a tremendous swell, because, great as he
+      was, there are but seven proved examples&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With this of yours,&rdquo; Lord John broke in, &ldquo;there are eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why haven&rsquo;t I known about him?&rdquo; Lord Theign put it as if so many
+      other people were guilty for this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter was the first to plead for the vague body. &ldquo;Why, I suppose in
+      order that you should have exactly this pleasure, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pleasures not desired are like acquaintances not sought&mdash;they
+      rather bore one!&rdquo; Lord Theign sighed. With which he moved away from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes followed him an instant&mdash;then she smiled at their guest. &ldquo;Is
+      he bored at having the higher prize&mdash;if you&rsquo;re sure it <i>is</i> the
+      higher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble is sure&mdash;because if he isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Lord John added, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s a
+      wretch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;as he&rsquo;s certainly not a wretch it must be true. And
+      fancy,&rdquo; she exclaimed further, though as more particularly for herself,
+      &ldquo;our having suddenly incurred this immense debt to him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shall pay Mr. Crimble!&rdquo; said her father, who had turned round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole question appeared to have provoked in Lord John a rise of
+      spirits and a flush of humour. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you let him stick it on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His host, however, bethinking himself, checked him. &ldquo;Go <i>you</i> to Mr.
+      Bender straight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John saw the point. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;till he leaves. But I shall find you
+      here, shan&rsquo;t I?&rdquo; he asked with all earnestness of Lady Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had an hesitation, but after a look at her father she assented. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+      wait for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then <i>à tantôt!</i>&rdquo; It made him show for happy as, waving his hand at
+      her, he proceeded to seek Mr. Bender in presence of the object that most
+      excited that gentleman&rsquo;s appetite&mdash;to say nothing of the effect
+      involved on Lord John&rsquo;s own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved&mdash;it might have been nervously&mdash;about
+      the place a little, but soon broke ground. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have told you, I
+      understand, that I&rsquo;ve promised to speak to you for him. But I understand
+      also that he has found something to say for himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we talked&mdash;a while since,&rdquo; the girl said. &ldquo;At least <i>he</i>
+      did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he speaks very well&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve never disliked him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It pulled her father up. &ldquo;Is that <i>all</i>&mdash;when I think so much of
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone
+      far; but she waited a little. &ldquo;Do you think very, <i>very</i> much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely I&rsquo;ve made my good opinion clear to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again she had a pause. &ldquo;Oh yes, I&rsquo;ve seen you like him and believe in him&mdash;and
+      I&rsquo;ve found him pleasant and clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has never had,&rdquo; Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained, &ldquo;what
+      I call a real show.&rdquo; But the character under discussion could after all be
+      summed up without searching analysis. &ldquo;I consider nevertheless that
+      there&rsquo;s plenty in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a moderate claim, to which Lady Grace might assent. &ldquo;He strikes me
+      as naturally quick and&mdash;well, nice. But I agree with you than he
+      hasn&rsquo;t had a chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you can see your way by sympathy and confidence to help him to
+      one I dare say you&rsquo;ll find your reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a third time she considered, as if a certain curtness in her
+      companion&rsquo;s manner rather hindered, in such a question, than helped.
+      Didn&rsquo;t he simplify too much, you would have felt her ask, and wasn&rsquo;t his
+      visible wish for brevity of debate a sign of his uncomfortable and indeed
+      rather irritated sense of his not making a figure in it? &ldquo;Do you desire it
+      very particularly?&rdquo; was, however, all she at last brought out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like it exceedingly&mdash;if you act from conviction. Then of
+      course only; but of one thing I&rsquo;m myself convinced&mdash;of what he thinks
+      of yourself and feels for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then would you mind my waiting a little?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I mean to be
+      absolutely sure of myself.&rdquo; After which, on his delaying to agree, she
+      added frankly, as to help her case: &ldquo;Upon my word, father, I should like
+      to do what would please you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it determined in him a sharper impatience. &ldquo;Ah, what would please <i>me!</i>
+      Don&rsquo;t put it off on &lsquo;me&rsquo;! Judge absolutely for yourself&rdquo;&mdash;he slightly
+      took himself up&mdash;&ldquo;in the light of my having consented to do for him
+      what I always <i>hate</i> to do: deviate from my normal practice of never
+      intermeddling. If I&rsquo;ve deviated now you can judge. But to do so all round,
+      of course, take&mdash;in reason!&mdash;your time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask then,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for still a little more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked for this, verily, as if it was not in reason. &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; he
+      then returned, &ldquo;what he&rsquo;ll feel that a sign of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll tell him what I mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll send him to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at his watch and was going, but after a &ldquo;Thanks, father,&rdquo; she
+      had stopped him. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s one thing more.&rdquo; An embarrassment showed in her
+      manner, but at the cost of some effect of earnest abruptness she
+      surmounted it. &ldquo;What does your American&mdash;Mr. Bender&mdash;want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign plainly felt the challenge. &ldquo;&lsquo;My&rsquo; American? He&rsquo;s none of
+      mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then Lord John&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s none of his either&mdash;more, I mean, than any one else&rsquo;s. He&rsquo;s
+      every one&rsquo;s American, literally&mdash;to all appearance; and I&rsquo;ve not to
+      tell <i>you</i>, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people
+      stalk in and out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, father&mdash;certainly,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re splendidly generous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on
+      that; but he added as if it were enough: &ldquo;What the man must by this time
+      want more than anything else is his car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not then anything of ours?&rdquo; she still insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of &lsquo;ours&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed with a frown. &ldquo;Are you afraid he has an eye to
+      something of <i>yours?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, if we&rsquo;ve a new treasure&mdash;which we certainly have if we possess
+      a Mantovano&mdash;haven&rsquo;t we all, even I, an immense interest in it?&rdquo; And
+      before he could answer, &ldquo;Is <i>that</i> exposed?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any
+      illusion to the &ldquo;exposure&rdquo; of the objects they so solidly sheltered was
+      obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a stroke
+      both his own reassurance and his daughter&rsquo;s. &ldquo;How can there be a question
+      of it when he only wants Sir Joshuas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants ours?&rdquo; the girl gasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At absolutely any price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;discussing it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated as between chiding and contenting her&mdash;then he
+      handsomely chose. &ldquo;My dear child, for what do you take me?&rdquo; With which he
+      impatiently started, through the long and stately perspective, for the
+      saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sank into a chair when he had gone; she sat there some moments in a
+      visible tension of thought, her hands clasped in her lap and her dropped
+      eyes fixed and unperceiving; but she sprang up as Hugh Crimble, in search
+      of her, again stood before her. He presented himself as with winged
+      sandals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck to find you! I must take my spin back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve seen everything as you wished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; he smiled, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen wonders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She showed her pleasure. &ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;ve got some things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So Mr. Bender says!&rdquo; he laughed. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got five or six&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only five or six?&rdquo; she cried in bright alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Only&rsquo;?&rdquo; he continued to laugh. &ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s enormous, five or six things
+      of the first importance! But I think I ought to mention to you,&rdquo; he added,
+      &ldquo;a most barefaced &lsquo;Rubens&rsquo; there in the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t a Rubens?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more than I&rsquo;m a Ruskin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll brand us&mdash;expose us for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ll let you off&mdash;I&rsquo;ll be quiet if you&rsquo;re good, if you go
+      straight. I&rsquo;ll only hold it <i>in terrorem</i>. One can&rsquo;t be sure in these
+      dreadful days&mdash;that&rsquo;s always to remember; so that if you&rsquo;re not good
+      I&rsquo;ll come down on you with it. But to balance against that threat,&rdquo; he
+      went on, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made the very grandest find. At least I believe I have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was all there for this news. &ldquo;Of the Manto-vano&mdash;hidden in the
+      other thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh wondered&mdash;almost as if she had been before him. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean
+      to say <i>you&rsquo;ve</i> had the idea of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but my father has told me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is your father,&rdquo; he eagerly asked, &ldquo;really gratified?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With her conscious eyes on him&mdash;her eyes could clearly be very
+      conscious about her father&mdash;she considered a moment. &ldquo;He always
+      prefers old associations and appearances to new; but I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;ll resign
+      himself if you see your way to a certainty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it will be a question of the weight of expert opinion that I shall
+      invoke. But I&rsquo;m not afraid,&rdquo; he resolutely said, &ldquo;and I shall make the
+      thing, from its splendid rarity, the crown and flower of your glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her serious face shone at him with a charmed gratitude. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s awfully
+      beautiful then your having come to us so. It&rsquo;s awfully beautiful your
+      having brought us this way, in a flash&mdash;as dropping out of a chariot
+      of fire&mdash;more light and what you apparently feel with myself as more
+      honour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the beauty&rsquo;s in your having yourself done it!&rdquo; he returned. He gave
+      way to the positive joy of it. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ve brought the &lsquo;light&rsquo; and the rest&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      to say the very useful information&mdash;who in the world was it brought
+      <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had a gesture of protest &ldquo;You&rsquo;d have come in some other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure! I&rsquo;m beastly shy&mdash;little as I may seem to show it:
+      save in great causes, when I&rsquo;m horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now
+      at any rate I only know what <i>has</i> been.&rdquo; She turned off for it,
+      moving away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for
+      unrest; and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. &ldquo;But
+      does anything in it all,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;trouble you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She faced about across the wider space, and there was a different note in
+      what she brought out. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what forces me so to <i>tell</i> you
+      things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tell&rsquo; me?&rdquo; he stared. &ldquo;Why, you&rsquo;ve told me nothing more monstrous than
+      that I&rsquo;ve been welcome!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of
+      our not &lsquo;going straight&rsquo;? When you said you&rsquo;d expose our bad&mdash;or is
+      it our false?&mdash;Rubens in the event of a certain danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed&rdquo;&mdash;he laughed again as
+      with relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: &ldquo;Why, to
+      let anything&mdash;of your best!&mdash;ever leave Dedborough. By which I
+      mean really of course leave the country.&rdquo; She turned again on this, and
+      something in her air made him wonder. &ldquo;I hope you don&rsquo;t feel there <i>is</i>
+      such a danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was
+      unthinkable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it <i>was</i>, to me, half an hour ago,&rdquo; she said as she came
+      nearer. &ldquo;But if it has since come up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;If&rsquo; it has! But <i>has</i> it? In the form of that monster? What Mr.
+      Bender wants is the great Duchess,&rdquo; he recalled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And my father won&rsquo;t sell <i>her</i>? No, he won&rsquo;t sell the great Duchess&mdash;there
+      I feel safe. But he greatly needs a certain sum of money&mdash;or he
+      thinks he does&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve just had a talk with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In which he has told you that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has told me nothing,&rdquo; Lady Grace said&mdash;&ldquo;or else told me quite
+      other things. But the more I think of them the more it comes to me that he
+      feels urged or tempted&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To despoil and denude these walls?&rdquo; Hugh broke in, looking about in his
+      sharper apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to satisfy, to save my sister. <i>Now</i> do you think our state so
+      ideal?&rdquo; she asked&mdash;but without elation for her hint of triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had no answer for this save &ldquo;Ah, but you terribly interest me. May I
+      ask what&rsquo;s the matter with your sister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, she wanted to go on straight now! &ldquo;The matter is&mdash;in the first
+      place&mdash;that she&rsquo;s too dazzlingly, dreadfully beautiful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More beautiful than you?&rdquo; his sincerity easily risked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Millions of times.&rdquo; Sad, almost sombre, she hadn&rsquo;t a shade of coquetry.
+      &ldquo;Kitty has debts&mdash;great heaped-up gaming debts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to such amounts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Incredible amounts it appears. And mountains of others too. She throws
+      herself all on our father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he <i>has</i> to pay them? There&rsquo;s no one else?&rdquo; Hugh asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited as if he might answer himself, and then as he apparently
+      didn&rsquo;t, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s only afraid there <i>may</i> be some else&mdash;that&rsquo;s how
+      she makes him do it,&rdquo; she said. And &ldquo;Now do you think,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;that
+      I don&rsquo;t tell you things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned them over in his young perception and pity, the things she told
+      him. &ldquo;Oh, oh, oh!&rdquo; And then, in the great place, while as, just spent by
+      the effort of her disclosure, she moved from him again, he took them all
+      in. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the situation that, as you say, may force his hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It absolutely, I feel, does force it.&rdquo; And the renewal of her appeal
+      brought her round. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it too lovely?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His frank disgust answered. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too damnable!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s you,&rdquo; she quite terribly smiled, &ldquo;who&mdash;by the &lsquo;irony of
+      fate&rsquo;!&mdash;have given him help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smote his head in the light of it. &ldquo;By the Mantovano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the possible Mantovano&mdash;as a substitute for the impossible Sir
+      Joshua. You&rsquo;ve made him aware of a value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but the value&rsquo;s to be fixed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Mr. Bender will fix it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;as he himself would say&mdash;I&rsquo;ll fix Mr. Bender!&rdquo; Hugh
+      declared. &ldquo;And he won&rsquo;t buy a pig in a poke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This cleared the air while they looked at each other; yet she had already
+      asked: &ldquo;What in the world can you do, and how in the world can you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, he was too excited for decision. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite see now, but give me
+      time.&rdquo; And he took out his watch as already to measure it. &ldquo;Oughtn&rsquo;t I
+      before I go to say a word to Lord Theign?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it your idea to become a lion in his path?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, say a cub&mdash;as that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m afraid he&rsquo;ll call me! But I
+      think I should speak to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew a conclusion momentarily dark. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have to learn in that case
+      that I&rsquo;ve told you of my fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And is there any good reason why he shouldn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kept her eyes on him and the darkness seemed to clear. &ldquo;No!&rdquo; she at
+      last replied, and, having gone to touch an electric bell, was with him
+      again. &ldquo;But I think I&rsquo;m rather sorry for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does that represent a reason why I should be so for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little she said nothing; but after that: &ldquo;None whatever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then is the sister of whom you speak Lady Imber?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, at this, raised her hand in caution: the butler had arrived,
+      with due gravity, in answer to her ring; to whom she made known her
+      desire. &ldquo;Please say to his lordship&mdash;in the saloon or wherever&mdash;that
+      Mr. Crimble must go.&rdquo; When Banks had departed, however, accepting the
+      responsibility of this mission, she answered her friend&rsquo;s question. &ldquo;The
+      sister of whom I speak is Lady Imber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loses then so heavily at bridge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loses more than she wins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh gazed as with interest at these oddities of the great. &ldquo;And yet she
+      still plays?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What else, in her set, should she do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This he was quite unable to say; but he could after a moment&rsquo;s exhibition
+      of the extent to which he was out of it put a question instead. &ldquo;So <i>you&rsquo;re</i>
+      not in her set?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not in her set.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then decidedly,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to save her. I only want&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was going on, but she broke in: &ldquo;I know what you want!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eyes on her till he had made sure&mdash;and this deep exchange
+      between them had a beauty. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;re now <i>with</i> me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m now <i>with</i> you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;shake hands on it&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He offered her his hand, she took it, and their grasp became, as you would
+      have seen in their fine young faces, a pledge in which they stood a minute
+      locked. Lord Theign came upon them from the saloon in the midst of the
+      process; on which they separated as with an air of its having consisted
+      but of Hugh&rsquo;s leave-taking. With some such form of mere civility, at any
+      rate, he appeared, by the manner in which he addressed himself to Hugh, to
+      have supposed them occupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry my daughter can&rsquo;t keep you; but I must at least thank you for
+      your interesting view of my picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of
+      this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with a
+      sense of possibly awkward consequences: &ldquo;May I&mdash;before you&rsquo;re sure of
+      your indebtedness&mdash;put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?&rdquo;
+       It sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous&mdash;as was in
+      fact testified to by his lordship&rsquo;s quick stiff stare, full of wonder at
+      so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. &ldquo;If I
+      contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of the
+      work you speak of, may I have from you an assurance that my success isn&rsquo;t
+      to serve as a basis for any peril&mdash;or possibility&mdash;of its
+      leaving the country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this,
+      turned a shade pale. &ldquo;You ask of me an &lsquo;assurance&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look of
+      having counted the cost of his step. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I <i>must</i>, you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. &ldquo;And
+      pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a
+      service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called
+      spirit. &ldquo;A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir&mdash;and
+      with which you may take it from me that I&rsquo;m already quite prepared to
+      dispense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to appear indiscreet,&rdquo; our young man returned; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to
+      have upset you in any way. But I can&rsquo;t overcome my anxiety&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign took the words from his lips. &ldquo;And you therefore invite me&mdash;at
+      the end of half an hour in this house!&mdash;to account to you for my
+      personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to
+      your hands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that
+      stretched about him&mdash;the great loz-enged marble floor that might have
+      figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to
+      &ldquo;stand.&rdquo; &ldquo;I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed
+      not to have seized any chance to appeal to you.&rdquo; Whatever difficulty he
+      had had shyly to face didn&rsquo;t exist for him now. &ldquo;I entreat you to think
+      again, to think <i>well</i>, before you deprive us of such a source of
+      just envy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you regard your entreaty as helped,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;by the
+      beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?&rdquo; Then as his monitor,
+      arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who, showing in her
+      face all the pain of the business, stood off at the distance to which a
+      woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to violence as
+      precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having turned: &ldquo;I ask
+      you that not less than I should like to know whom you speak of as
+      &lsquo;deprived&rsquo; of property that happens&mdash;for reasons that I don&rsquo;t suppose
+      you also quarrel with!&mdash;to be mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign,&rdquo; Hugh said, &ldquo;but I speak
+      of <i>all</i> of us&mdash;of all the people of England; who would deeply
+      deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear
+      you, I beseech you mercifully to consider.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The interest they bear me?&rdquo;&mdash;the master of Dedborough fairly
+      bristled with wonder. &ldquo;Pray how the devil do they show it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they show it in all sorts of ways&rdquo;&mdash;and Hugh&rsquo;s critical
+      smile, at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner
+      seeming to convey that he meant many things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Understand then, please,&rdquo; said Lord Theign with every inch of his
+      authority, &ldquo;that they&rsquo;ll show it best by minding their own business while
+      I very particularly mind mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You simply do, in other words,&rdquo; Hugh explicitly concluded, &ldquo;what happens
+      to be convenient to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to <i>you!</i>
+      So that I need no longer detain you,&rdquo; Lord Theign added with the last
+      dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while,
+      unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the cycling-cap
+      he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival. &ldquo;I apologise, my
+      lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your hospitality. But,&rdquo; he went
+      on with his uncommended cheer, &ldquo;my interest in your picture remains.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere
+      watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the first
+      time. &ldquo;And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and grows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone,
+      judged her contribution superfluous. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m happy to hear it, Grace&mdash;but
+      yours is another affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think on the contrary that it&rsquo;s quite the same one,&rdquo; she returned&mdash;&ldquo;since
+      it&rsquo;s on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to you what he has.&rdquo; The
+      resolution she had gathered while she awaited her chance sat in her
+      charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter paternal glare. &ldquo;I
+      let him know that I supposed you to think of profiting by the importance
+      of Mr. Bender&rsquo;s visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you might have spared, my dear, your&mdash;I suppose and hope
+      well-meant&mdash;interpretation of my mind.&rdquo; Lord Theign showed himself at
+      this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without
+      having been in the wrong. &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s visit will terminate&mdash;as soon
+      as he has released Lord John&mdash;without my having profited in the
+      smallest particular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. &ldquo;It was Lady
+      Grace&rsquo;s anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her, that my
+      idea about the Moretto would add to your power&mdash;well,&rdquo; he pushed on
+      not without awkwardness, &ldquo;of &lsquo;realising&rsquo; advantageously on such a
+      prospective rise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to
+      Lady Grace. &ldquo;Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any
+      association with this gentleman&rsquo;s ideas&mdash;whether about the Moretto or
+      about anything else&mdash;his further application of them ceases from this
+      moment to concern us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across their
+      companion. &ldquo;Will you make your inquiry for <i>me</i> then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light again kindled in him. &ldquo;With all the pleasure in life!&rdquo; He had
+      found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for departure,
+      with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the direction from
+      which he had entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to Lady
+      Grace. &ldquo;I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public defiance
+      of me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance she
+      met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms into
+      which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not following it
+      up. She pronounced in quick warning &ldquo;Lord John!&rdquo;&mdash;for their friend,
+      released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was already there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. &ldquo;Bender&rsquo;s at last off,
+      but&rdquo;&mdash;he indicated the direction of the garden front&mdash;&ldquo;you may
+      still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained. He
+      looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from his
+      daughter&rsquo;s suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious young
+      woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had a gesture
+      of almost desperate indifference and passed quickly out by the door to the
+      terrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had left Lord John gaping. &ldquo;What on earth&rsquo;s the matter with your
+      father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What on earth indeed?&rdquo; Lady Grace unaidingly asked. &ldquo;Is he discussing
+      with that awful man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?&rdquo; Lord John showed surprise&mdash;which
+      might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he shook everything
+      off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old Bender away. &ldquo;My dear
+      girl, what do <i>we</i> care&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I care immensely, I assure you,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;and I ask of you,
+      please, to tell me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected, threw
+      him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s not for such
+      a matter I&rsquo;m here, Lady Grace&mdash;I&rsquo;m here with that fond question of my
+      own.&rdquo; And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement motion of
+      protest: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come for your kind answer&mdash;the answer your father
+      instructed me to count on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no kind answer to give you!&rdquo;&mdash;she raised forbidding hands. &ldquo;I
+      entreat you to leave me alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as
+      if stricken by violence. &ldquo;In God&rsquo;s name then what has happened&mdash;when
+      you almost gave me your word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened is that I&rsquo;ve found it impossible to listen to you.&rdquo; And
+      she moved as if fleeing she scarce knew whither before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had already hastened around another way, however, as to meet her in her
+      quick circuit of the hall. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all you&rsquo;ve got to say to me after what
+      has passed between us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stopped her thus, but she had also stopped him, and her passionate
+      denial set him a limit. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to say&mdash;sorry as I am&mdash;that if
+      you <i>must</i> have an answer it&rsquo;s this: that never, Lord John, never,
+      can there be anything more between us.&rdquo; And her gesture cleared her path,
+      permitting her to achieve her flight. &ldquo;Never, no, never,&rdquo; she repeated as
+      she went&mdash;&ldquo;never, never, never!&rdquo; She got off by the door at which she
+      had been aiming to some retreat of her own, while aghast and defeated,
+      left to make the best of it, he sank after a moment into a chair and
+      remained quite pitiably staring before him, appealing to the great blank
+      splendour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK SECOND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by the
+      door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person coming
+      in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr. Gotch, her
+      butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway forming opposite
+      the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample, lighted from the
+      back of the house and having its independent connection with the upper
+      floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not immediately finding the
+      visitor to whom she had been called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Mr. Crimble&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here he is, my lady.&rdquo; And he made way for that gentleman, who emerged
+      from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt withdrawal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I went in for a minute, with your servant&rsquo;s permission,&rdquo; Hugh explained,
+      &ldquo;to see your famous Lawrence&mdash;which is splendid; he was so good as to
+      arrange the light.&rdquo; The young man&rsquo;s dress was of a form less relaxed than
+      on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft felt hat that he
+      rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the limit of his sacrifice
+      to vain appearances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
+      act. &ldquo;Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do&mdash;and even seems
+      to have ended by taking her for his very own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of her
+      line,&rdquo; Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement of
+      replying; &ldquo;and I must make sure of another look at her when I&rsquo;ve a good
+      deal more time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. &ldquo;You hadn&rsquo;t then come <i>for</i>
+      the poor dear?&rdquo; And then as he obviously hadn&rsquo;t, but for something quite
+      else: &ldquo;I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be coveted&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       It dropped with a yearning sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?&rdquo; Hugh asked. &ldquo;Ah, I
+      shall never do their work&mdash;unless to betray them: <i>that</i> I
+      shouldn&rsquo;t in the least mind!&mdash;and I&rsquo;m here, frankly, at this early
+      hour, to ask your consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular
+      business, if she can kindly give me time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve known then of her being with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,&rdquo; he
+      explained; &ldquo;of her wishing not to go to her sister&rsquo;s, and of Lord Theign&rsquo;s
+      having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of proceeding, to
+      some foreign part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve learnt it from having seen her&mdash;these three or four
+      weeks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve met her&mdash;but just barely&mdash;two or three times: at a
+      &lsquo;private view&rsquo; at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she
+      hasn&rsquo;t told you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her
+      thick lustre. &ldquo;I wanted to see how much <i>you&rsquo;d</i> tell.&rdquo; She waited
+      even as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. &ldquo;Once again at
+      dinner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but alas not near her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once then at a private view?&mdash;when, with the squash they usually
+      are, you might have been very near her indeed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;it <i>was</i> a squash!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And once,&rdquo; his hostess pursued, &ldquo;in the lobby of the opera?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After &lsquo;Tristan&rsquo;&mdash;yes; but with some awful grand people I didn&rsquo;t
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. &ldquo;Oh, the Pennimans are nobody!
+      But now,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve come, you say, on &lsquo;business&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very important, please&mdash;which accounts for the hour I&rsquo;ve ventured
+      and the appearance I present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ask you too much to &lsquo;account,&rsquo;&rdquo; Lady Sandgate kindly said; &ldquo;but I
+      can&rsquo;t not wonder if she hasn&rsquo;t told you what things have happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast about. &ldquo;She has had no chance to tell me anything&mdash;beyond the
+      fact of her being here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without the reason?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;The reason&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave it up, going straighter. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s with me then as an old firm
+      friend. Under my care and protection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see&rdquo;&mdash;he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint
+      in respect to himself. &ldquo;She puts you on your guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. &ldquo;She puts me on my honour&mdash;or
+      at least her father does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to her seeing <i>me</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to <i>my</i> seeing at least&mdash;what may happen to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;you say&mdash;things <i>have</i> happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His companion fairly sounded him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve only talked&mdash;when you&rsquo;ve
+      met&mdash;of &lsquo;art&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he smiled, &ldquo;&lsquo;art is long&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord
+      Theign is presently due&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Here</i>, back already from abroad?&rdquo;&mdash;he was all alert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has not yet gone&mdash;he comes up this morning to start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And stops here on his way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To take the <i>train de luxe</i> this afternoon to his annual
+      Salsomaggiore. But with so little time to spare,&rdquo; she went on
+      reassuringly, &ldquo;that, to simplify&mdash;as he wired me an hour ago from
+      Dedborough&mdash;he has given rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is
+      particularly to wait for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who may therefore arrive at any moment?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her bracelet watch. &ldquo;Scarcely before noon. So you&rsquo;ll just
+      have your chance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank the powers then!&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh grasped at it. &ldquo;I shall have it best
+      if you&rsquo;ll be so good as to tell me first&mdash;well,&rdquo; he faltered, &ldquo;what
+      it is that, to my great disquiet, you&rsquo;ve further alluded to; what it is
+      that has occurred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
+      pronounced. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
+      father&rsquo;s extreme reprobation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, so much as that&mdash;that she must have greatly annoyed him&mdash;I
+      have been supposing. But isn&rsquo;t it by her having asked me to act for her? I
+      mean about the Mantovano&mdash;which I <i>have</i> done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate wondered. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve &lsquo;acted&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve come to tell her at last&mdash;and I&rsquo;m all impatience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see, I see&rdquo;&mdash;she had caught a clue. &ldquo;He hated that&mdash;yes; but
+      you haven&rsquo;t really made out,&rdquo; she put to him, &ldquo;the <i>other</i> effect of
+      your hour at Dedborough?&rdquo; She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
+      his divination had failed, and she didn&rsquo;t trouble him to confess it.
+      &ldquo;Directly you had gone she &lsquo;turned down&rsquo; Lord John. Declined, I mean, the
+      offer of his hand in marriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. &ldquo;He proposed there&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had spoken, that day, <i>before</i>&mdash;before your talk with Lord
+      Theign, who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
+      Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you <i>had</i>
+      gone, for his answer&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t have him?&rdquo; Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. &ldquo;She wouldn&rsquo;t look at
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He bethought himself. &ldquo;But had she said she would?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So her father indignantly considers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the <i>ground</i> of his indignation?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
+      crisis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh Crimble turned this over&mdash;feeling apparently for something he
+      didn&rsquo;t find. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to hear such things, but where&rsquo;s the connection
+      with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don&rsquo;t see any&mdash;-!&rdquo; In that
+      case, Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s motion implied, she washed her hands of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
+      to guess a conundrum&mdash;which he gave up. &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t see any, Lady
+      Sandgate. But,&rdquo; he a little inconsistently said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m greatly obliged to
+      you for telling me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mention it!&mdash;though I think it <i>is</i> good of me,&rdquo; she
+      smiled, &ldquo;on so short an acquaintance.&rdquo; To which she added more gravely: &ldquo;I
+      leave you the situation&mdash;but I&rsquo;m willing to let you know that I&rsquo;m all
+      on Grace&rsquo;s side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I, <i>rather!</i>&mdash;please let me frankly say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He clearly refreshed, he even almost charmed her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the very least you
+      can say!&mdash;though I&rsquo;m not sure whether you say it as the simplest or
+      as the very subtlest of men. But in case you don&rsquo;t know as I do how little
+      the particular candidate I&rsquo;ve named&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?&rdquo; he broke in&mdash;all quick
+      intelligence here at least. &ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t perhaps know as well as you do&mdash;but
+      I think I know as well as I just yet require.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are then! And if you did prevent,&rdquo; his hostess maturely
+      pursued, &ldquo;what wouldn&rsquo;t have been&mdash;well, good or nice, I&rsquo;m quite on
+      your side too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at a
+      meaning. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of
+      effort or ingenuity&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?&rdquo;&mdash;she took his presumed
+      sense faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her
+      reply to it. &ldquo;Well, will you keep the secret of everything I&rsquo;ve said or
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; she momentously returned, &ldquo;I only want, too, to make Bender
+      impossible. If you ask me,&rdquo; she pursued, &ldquo;how I arrange that with my deep
+      loyalty to Lord Theign&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ask you anything of the sort,&rdquo; he interrupted&mdash;&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t
+      ask you for the world; and my own bright plan for achieving the <i>coup</i>
+      you mention&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time, at the most,&rdquo; she said, consulting afresh her bracelet
+      watch, &ldquo;to explain to Lady Grace.&rdquo; She reached an electric bell, which she
+      touched&mdash;facing then her visitor again with an abrupt and slightly
+      embarrassed change of tone. &ldquo;You do think <i>my</i> great portrait
+      splendid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had strayed far from it and all too languidly came back. &ldquo;Your Lawrence
+      there? As I said, magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the butler had come in, interrupting, straight from the lobby; of whom
+      she made her request. &ldquo;Let her ladyship know&mdash;Mr. Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch looked hard at Hugh and the crumpled hat&mdash;almost as if having
+      an option. But he resigned himself to repeating, with a distinctness that
+      scarce fell short of the invidious, &ldquo;Mr. Crimble,&rdquo; and departed on his
+      errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s fair flush of diplomacy had meanwhile not faded. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t
+      you, with your immense cleverness and power, get the Government to do
+      something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About your picture?&rdquo; Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment.
+      &ldquo;You too then want to sell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh she righted herself. &ldquo;Never to a private party!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s not after it?&rdquo; he asked&mdash;though scarce lighting his
+      reluctant interest with a forced smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most intensely after it. But never,&rdquo; cried the proprietress, &ldquo;to a
+      bloated alien!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;carrying that
+      magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as the
+      object itself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it you for nothing?&rdquo; She threw up shocked hands. &ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m an
+      aged female pauper and can&rsquo;t make <i>every</i> sacrifice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh pretended&mdash;none too convincingly&mdash;to think. &ldquo;Will you let
+      them have it very cheap?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;for less than such a bribe as Bender&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he said expressively, &ldquo;that might be, and still&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she had a flare of fond confidence. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll find out what he&rsquo;ll
+      offer&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll on your side do what you can&mdash;and then ask them
+      a third less.&rdquo; And she followed it up&mdash;as if suddenly conceiving him
+      a prig. &ldquo;See here, Mr. Crimble, I&rsquo;ve been&mdash;and this very first time I&mdash;charming
+      to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have indeed,&rdquo; he returned; &ldquo;but you throw back on it a lurid light if
+      it has all been for <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been&mdash;well, to keep things as I want them; and if I&rsquo;ve given
+      you precious information mightn&rsquo;t you on your side&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Estimate its value in cash?&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh sharply took her up. &ldquo;Ah, Lady
+      Sandgate, I <i>am</i> in your debt, but if you really bargain for your
+      precious information I&rsquo;d rather we assume that I haven&rsquo;t enjoyed it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady
+      Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the nearer
+      door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t bargain
+      with the Treasury!&rdquo;&mdash;she had passed out by the time Lady Grace
+      arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Hugh recognised in this friend&rsquo;s entrance and face the light of welcome
+      he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t
+      been able to wait, I&rsquo;ve wanted so much to tell you&mdash;I mean how I&rsquo;ve
+      just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappen-dick, who was free and
+      ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must have
+      reached some time yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. &ldquo;Ah, the dear
+      sweet thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he&rsquo;s a brick&mdash;but the question now hangs in the balance.
+      Allowing him time to have got into relation with the picture, I&rsquo;ve begun
+      to expect his wire, which will probably come to my club; but my fidget,
+      while I wait, has driven me&rdquo;&mdash;he threw out and dropped his arms in
+      expression of his soft surrender&mdash;&ldquo;well, just to do <i>this</i>: to
+      come to you here, in my fever, at an unnatural hour and uninvited, and at
+      least let you know I&rsquo;ve &lsquo;acted.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but I simply rejoice,&rdquo; Lady Grace declared, &ldquo;to be acting <i>with</i>
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you are, if you are,&rdquo; the young man cried, &ldquo;why everything&rsquo;s
+      beautiful and right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all I care for and think of now,&rdquo; she went on in her bright
+      devotion, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve only wondered and hoped!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, Hugh found for it all a rapid, abundant lucidity. &ldquo;He was away from
+      home at first, and I had to wait&mdash;but I crossed last week, found him
+      and settled incoming home by Paris, where I had a grand four days&rsquo; jaw
+      with the fellows there and saw <i>their</i> great specimen of our master:
+      all of which has given him time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now his time&rsquo;s up?&rdquo; the girl eagerly asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>must</i> be&mdash;and we shall see.&rdquo; But Hugh postponed that
+      question to a matter of more moment still. &ldquo;The thing is that at last I&rsquo;m
+      able to tell you how I feel the trouble I&rsquo;ve brought you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her, quickly colouring, rest grave eyes on him. &ldquo;What do you know&mdash;when
+      I haven&rsquo;t told you&mdash;about my &lsquo;trouble&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?&rdquo;&mdash;he had his
+      answer ready. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve sought asylum with this good friend from the effects
+      of your father&rsquo;s resentment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Sought asylum&rsquo; is perhaps excessive,&rdquo; Lady Grace returned&mdash;&ldquo;though
+      it wasn&rsquo;t pleasant with him after that hour, no,&rdquo; she allowed. &ldquo;And I
+      couldn&rsquo;t go, you see, to Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No indeed, you couldn&rsquo;t go to Kitty.&rdquo; He smiled at her hard as he added:
+      &ldquo;I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is it that
+      I&rsquo;ve set you adrift&mdash;that I&rsquo;ve darkened and poisoned your days.
+      You&rsquo;re paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so
+      gallantly in my grand remonstrance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again&mdash;as
+      if accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of
+      her state. &ldquo;Why do you talk of it as &lsquo;paying&rsquo;&mdash;if it&rsquo;s all to come
+      back to my <i>being</i> paid? I mean by your blest success&mdash;if you
+      really do what you want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have your word for it,&rdquo; he searchingly said, &ldquo;that our really pulling
+      it off together will make up to you&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be ashamed if it didn&rsquo;t, for everything!&rdquo;&mdash;she took the
+      question from his mouth. &ldquo;I believe in such a cause exactly as you do&mdash;and
+      found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your faith.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll help me no end,&rdquo; he said all simply and sincerely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve helped <i>me</i> already&rdquo;&mdash;that she gave him straight back.
+      And on it they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely
+      communing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very wonderful&mdash;for a girl!&rdquo; Hugh brought out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One <i>has</i> to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one&rsquo;s house,&rdquo;
+       she laughed; &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s all I am of ours&mdash;but a true and a right and
+      a straight one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He glowed with his admiration. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any rate,
+      the go-by and more exactly stated her case. &ldquo;I see our situation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So do I, Lady Grace!&rdquo; he cried with the strongest emphasis. &ldquo;And your
+      father only doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said for intelligent correction&mdash;&ldquo;he sees it, there&rsquo;s
+      nothing in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that he
+      wouldn&rsquo;t have seized. &ldquo;He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other day
+      he took as a rude protest. And any protest&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any protest,&rdquo; she quickly and fully agreed, &ldquo;he takes as an offence, yes.
+      It&rsquo;s his theory that he still has rights,&rdquo; she smiled, &ldquo;though he <i>is</i>
+      a miserable peer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should he not have rights,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;when he has really everything
+      on earth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he doesn&rsquo;t even <i>know</i> that&mdash;he takes it so much for
+      granted.&rdquo; And she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to
+      explain. &ldquo;He lives all in his own world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours&mdash;quite
+      as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube.&rdquo; With which
+      Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. &ldquo;And he must be here
+      to do business to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; Lady Grace asked, &ldquo;that he&rsquo;s to meet Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and,&rdquo; her companion saw as he glanced at
+      the clock on the chimney, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve only ten minutes, at best. The &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; 
+      won&rsquo;t have been good for him,&rdquo; he added&mdash;&ldquo;you doubtless have seen the
+      &lsquo;Journal&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;she was vague. &ldquo;We live by the &lsquo;Morning Post.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why our friend here didn&rsquo;t speak then,&rdquo; Hugh said with a better
+      light&mdash;&ldquo;which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn&rsquo;t do,
+      either. But they&rsquo;ve a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her
+      Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty&mdash;if we
+      don&rsquo;t do something energetic&mdash;of more and more Benders to come: such
+      a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with
+      huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to
+      the rumour current&mdash;as too horrific to believe&mdash;of Lord Theign&rsquo;s
+      putting up his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any
+      such sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and
+      momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent
+      authorities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of whom,&rdquo; said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re of
+      course seen as not the least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I&rsquo;m as yet&mdash;however I&rsquo;m &lsquo;seen&rsquo;&mdash;the
+      whole collection. But we&rsquo;ve time&rdquo;&mdash;he rested on that &ldquo;The fat, if
+      you&rsquo;ll allow me the expression, is on the fire&mdash;which, as I see the
+      matter, is where this particular fat <i>should</i> be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the article, then,&rdquo; his companion appealed, &ldquo;very severe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent&mdash;and the
+      great thing is that it immensely &lsquo;marks,&rsquo; as they say. It will have made a
+      big public difference&mdash;from this day; though it&rsquo;s of course aimed not
+      so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow to
+      tackle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly&rdquo;&mdash;she was full of the saving vision; &ldquo;but as the conditions
+      are directly embodied in persons&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it bells
+      three or four.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she richly brooded&mdash;&ldquo;Lady Lappington <i>is</i> a cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will have been &lsquo;belled,&rsquo; at any rate, with your father,&rdquo; Hugh
+      amusedly went on, &ldquo;to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good
+      for us&mdash;I mean for <i>us</i> in particular.&rdquo; Yet he had to bethink
+      himself. &ldquo;The case depends a good deal of course on how your father <i>takes</i>
+      such a resounding rap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know how he&rsquo;ll take it!&rdquo;&mdash;her perception went all the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the very highest and properest spirit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo; She was as brave as she was clear. &ldquo;Or at least I
+      shall!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. &ldquo;You <i>are</i>, yes,
+      splendid!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I even,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;surprise myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was already back at his calculations. &ldquo;How early do the papers get
+      to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast&mdash;which isn&rsquo;t, however, very
+      early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s what has caused his wire to Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how will such talk strike <i>him</i>?&rdquo; the girl asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought, he
+      had let it lead him to certainty. &ldquo;It will have moved Mr. Bender to
+      absolute rapture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather,&rdquo; Lady Grace wondered, &ldquo;than have put him off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have put him prodigiously <i>on!</i> Mr. Bender&mdash;as he said
+      to me at Dedborough of his noble host there,&rdquo; Hugh pursued&mdash;&ldquo;is &lsquo;a
+      very nice man&rsquo;; but he&rsquo;s a product of the world of advertisment, and
+      advertisement is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in
+      glory or a fish in water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took it from him as half doubting. &ldquo;But mayn&rsquo;t advertisement, in so
+      special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught
+      from foreign comrades. &ldquo;He rides the biggest whirlwind&mdash;he has got it
+      saddled and bitted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She faced the image, but cast about &ldquo;Then where does our success come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our making the beast, all the same, bolt with him and throw him.&rdquo; And
+      Hugh further pointed the moral. &ldquo;If in such proceedings all he knows is
+      publicity the thing is to give him publicity, and it&rsquo;s only a question of
+      giving him enough. By the time he has enough for himself, you see, he&rsquo;ll
+      have too much for every one else&mdash;so that we shall &lsquo;up&rsquo; in a body and
+      slay him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s eyebrows, in her wondering face, rose to a question. &ldquo;But if he
+      has meanwhile got the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll slay him before he gets it!&rdquo; He revelled in the breadth of his
+      view. &ldquo;Our own policy must be to <i>organise</i> to that end the
+      inevitable outcry. Organise Bender himself&mdash;organise him to scandal.&rdquo;
+       Hugh had already even pity to spare for their victim. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t know it
+      from a boom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though carried along, however, Lady Grace could still measure. &ldquo;But that
+      will be only if he wants and decides for the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must make him then want and decide for it&mdash;decide, that is, for
+      &lsquo;ours.&rsquo; To save it we must work him up&mdash;he&rsquo;ll in that case want it so
+      indecently much. Then <i>we</i> shall have to want it more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she anxiously felt it her duty to remind him, &ldquo;you can take a
+      horse to water&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, trust me to make him drink!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There appeared a note in this that convinced her. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s you, Mr. Crimble,
+      who are &lsquo;splendid&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shall be&mdash;with my jolly wire!&rdquo; And all on that scent again,
+      &ldquo;May I come back to you from the club with Pappendick&rsquo;s news?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, rather, of course, come back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only not,&rdquo; he debated, &ldquo;till your father has left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace considered too, but sharply decided. &ldquo;Come when you <i>have</i>
+      it. But tell me first,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;one thing.&rdquo; She hung fire a little
+      while he waited, but she brought it out. &ldquo;Was it you who got the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; 
+      to speak?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, one scarcely &lsquo;gets&rsquo; the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who then gave them their &lsquo;tip&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the Mantovano and its peril?&rdquo; Well, he took a moment&mdash;but only
+      not to say; in addition to which the butler had reappeared, entering from
+      the lobby. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;when I come back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch had his manner of announcement while the visitor was mounting the
+      stairs. &ldquo;Mr. Breckenridge Bender!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then I go,&rdquo; said Lady Grace at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stay three minutes.&rdquo; Hugh turned with her, alertly, to the easier
+      issue, signalling hope and cheer from that threshold as he watched her
+      disappear; after which he faced about with as brave a smile and as ready
+      for immediate action as if she had there within kissed her hand to him.
+      Mr. Bender emerged at the same instant, Gotch withdrawing and closing the
+      door behind him; and the former personage, recognising his young friend,
+      threw up his hands for friendly pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Crimble,&rdquo; he cordially inquired, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve come with your great
+      news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh caught the allusion, it would have seemed, but after a moment. &ldquo;News
+      of the Moretto? No, Mr. Bender, I haven&rsquo;t news <i>yet</i>.&rdquo; But he added
+      as with high candour for the visitor&rsquo;s motion of disappointment: &ldquo;I think
+      I warned you, you know, that it would take three or four weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in <i>my</i> country,&rdquo; Mr. Bender returned with disgust, &ldquo;it would
+      take three or four minutes! Can&rsquo;t you make &lsquo;em step more lively?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m expecting, sir,&rdquo; said Hugh good-humouredly, &ldquo;a report from hour to
+      hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then will you let me have it right off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh indulged in a pause; after which very frankly: &ldquo;Ah, it&rsquo;s scarcely for
+      you, Mr. Bender, that I&rsquo;m acting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The great collector was but briefly checked. &ldquo;Well, can&rsquo;t you just act for
+      Art?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re doing that yourself so powerfully,&rdquo; Hugh laughed, &ldquo;that I
+      think I had best leave it to you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a new
+      improvement. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you want to go round acting <i>with</i> me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go &lsquo;on tour,&rsquo; as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Hugh said, &ldquo;if I had
+      any weight&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;d add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that <i>you</i>
+      should go back on me&mdash;after working me up so down there? The worst
+      I&rsquo;ve done,&rdquo; Mr. Bender continued, &ldquo;is to refuse that Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has it deplorably been <i>offered</i> you?&rdquo; our young man cried,
+      unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his
+      fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving the
+      owner of the great work away: &ldquo;Then why are you&mdash;as if you were a
+      banished Romeo&mdash;so keen for news from Verona?&rdquo; To this odd mixture of
+      business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with
+      but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of tested
+      utility; so that Hugh put him another question: &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you here, sir, on
+      the chance of the Mantovano?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m here,&rdquo; he then imperturbably said, &ldquo;because Lord Theign has wired me
+      to meet him. Ain&rsquo;t you here for that yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a &ldquo;big&rdquo; choice of answers.
+      &ldquo;Dear, no! I&rsquo;ve but been in, by Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s leave, to see that grand
+      Lawrence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah yes, she&rsquo;s very kind about it&mdash;one does go &lsquo;in.&rsquo;&rdquo; After which Mr.
+      Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity.
+      &ldquo;Is any one <i>after</i> that grand Lawrence?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I hope not,&rdquo; Hugh laughed, &ldquo;unless you again dreadfully are:
+      wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You call it,&rdquo; Mr. Bender impartially inquired, &ldquo;a <i>very</i> wonderful
+      thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as a Lawrence, it has quite bowled me over&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh spoke as for
+      the strictly aesthetic awkwardness of that. &ldquo;But you know I take my
+      pictures hard.&rdquo; He gave a punch to his hat, pressed for time in this
+      connection as he was glad truly to appear to his friend. &ldquo;I must make my
+      little <i>rapport</i>.&rdquo; Yet before it he did seek briefly to explain.
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;re a band of young men who care&mdash;and we watch the great things.
+      Also&mdash;for I must give you the real truth about myself&mdash;we watch
+      the great people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I guess I&rsquo;m used to being watched&mdash;if that&rsquo;s the worst you can
+      do.&rdquo; To which Mr. Bender added in his homely way: &ldquo;But you know, Mr.
+      Crimble, what I&rsquo;m <i>really</i> after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh&rsquo;s strategy on this would again have peeped out for us. &ldquo;The man in
+      this morning&rsquo;s &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; appears at least to have discovered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, the man in this morning&rsquo;s &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; has discovered three or four
+      weeks&mdash;as it appears to take you here for everything&mdash;after my
+      beginning to talk. Why, they knew I was talking <i>that</i> time ago on
+      the other side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they know things in the States,&rdquo; Hugh cheerfully agreed, &ldquo;so
+      independently of their happening! But you must have talked loud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I haven&rsquo;t so much talked as raved,&rdquo; Mr. Bender conceded&mdash;&ldquo;for
+      I&rsquo;m afraid that when I do want a thing I rave till I get it. You heard me
+      at Ded-borough, and your enterprising daily press has at last caught the
+      echo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then they&rsquo;ll make up for lost time! But have you done it,&rdquo; Hugh asked,
+      &ldquo;to prepare an alibi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An alibi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By &lsquo;raving,&rsquo; as you say, the saddle on the wrong horse. I don&rsquo;t think you
+      at all believe you&rsquo;ll get the Sir Joshua&mdash;but meanwhile we shall have
+      cleared up the question of the Moretto.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, imperturbable, didn&rsquo;t speak till he had done justice to this
+      picture of his subtlety. &ldquo;Then, why on earth do you want to boom the
+      Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask that,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;because it&rsquo;s the boomed thing that&rsquo;s most in
+      peril.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s the big, the bigger, the biggest things, and if you drag their
+      value to the light why shouldn&rsquo;t we want to grab them and carry them off&mdash;the
+      same as all of <i>you</i> originally did?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, not quite the same,&rdquo; Hugh smiled&mdash;&ldquo;that I <i>will</i> say for
+      you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you stick it on now&mdash;you <i>have</i> got an eye for the rise in
+      values. But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be
+      mighty glad that, to such a time, I&rsquo;ll pay it you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our young man kept, during a moment&rsquo;s thought, his eyes on his companion,
+      and then resumed with all intensity and candour: &ldquo;You may easily, Mr.
+      Bender, be too much for me&mdash;as you appear too much for far greater
+      people. But may I ask you, very earnestly, for your word on <i>this</i>,
+      as to any case in which that happens&mdash;that when precious things,
+      things we are to lose here, <i>are</i> knocked down to you, you&rsquo;ll let us
+      at least take leave of them, let us have a sight of them in London, before
+      they&rsquo;re borne off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s big face fell almost with a crash. &ldquo;Hand them over, you mean,
+      to the sandwich men on Bond Street?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To one or other of the placard and poster men&mdash;I don&rsquo;t insist on the
+      inserted human slice! Let the great values, as a compensation to us, be on
+      view for three or four weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask me,&rdquo; Mr. Bender returned, &ldquo;for a <i>general</i> assurance to that
+      effect?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, a particular one&mdash;so it be particular enough,&rdquo; Hugh said&mdash;&ldquo;will
+      do just for now. Let me put in my plea for the issue&mdash;well, of the
+      value that&rsquo;s actually in the scales.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Mantovano-Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Moretto-Mantovano!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t we better know which it is
+      first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. &ldquo;The public interest&mdash;playing
+      so straight on the question&mdash;may help to settle it. By which I mean
+      that it will profit enormously&mdash;the question of probability, of
+      identity itself will&mdash;by the discussion it will create. The
+      discussion will promote certainty&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And certainty,&rdquo; Mr. Bender massively mused, &ldquo;will kick up a row.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Of course</i> it will kick up a row!&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh thoroughly guaranteed
+      that. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England&mdash;if
+      you venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whom it won&rsquo;t be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But whom it will be exceedingly <i>mine</i> to practise on&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      Hugh laughed as at the fun before them&mdash;&ldquo;if I may entertain the sweet
+      hope of success. The only thing is&mdash;from my point of view,&rdquo; he went
+      on&mdash;&ldquo;that backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn&rsquo;t
+      in the least in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should
+      be really too much of it for his taste or his nerves he&rsquo;ll set his
+      handsome face as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what
+      I appeal to you for will have taken place&mdash;the picture will have been
+      seen by a lot of people who&rsquo;ll care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will have been seen,&rdquo; Mr. Bender amended&mdash;&ldquo;on the mere
+      contingency of my acquisition of it&mdash;only if its present owner
+      consents.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Consents&rsquo;?&rdquo; Hugh almost derisively echoed; &ldquo;why, he&rsquo;ll propose it
+      himself, he&rsquo;ll insist on it, he&rsquo;ll put it through, once he&rsquo;s angry enough&mdash;as
+      angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal act of his
+      will be sure to make him; and I&rsquo;m afraid the striking criticism, or at
+      least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown on his flame of
+      bravado.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Inevitably a student of character, Mr. Bender rose to the occasion. &ldquo;Yes,
+      I guess he&rsquo;s pretty mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve imputed to him&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh but wanted to abound in that sense&mdash;&ldquo;an
+      intention of which after all he isn&rsquo;t guilty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that&rdquo;&mdash;his listener glowed with interested optimism&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      they don&rsquo;t look out, if they impute it to him again, I guess he&rsquo;ll just go
+      and be guilty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh might at this moment have shown to an initiated eye as fairly elated
+      by the sense of producing something of the effect he had hoped. &ldquo;You
+      entertain the fond vision of lashing them up to that mistake, oh fisher in
+      troubled waters?&rdquo; And then with a finer art, as his companion, expansively
+      bright but crudely acute, eyed him in turn as if to sound <i>him</i>: &ldquo;The
+      strongest thing in such a type&mdash;one does make out&mdash;is his
+      resentment of a liberty taken; and the most natural furthermore is quite
+      that he should feel almost anything you do take uninvited from the
+      groaning board of his banquet of life to <i>be</i> such a liberty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender participated thus at his perceptive ease in the exposed
+      aristocratic illusion. &ldquo;Yes, I guess he has always lived as he likes, the
+      way those of you who have got things fixed for them <i>do</i>, over here;
+      and to have to quit it on account of unpleasant remark&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he gave up thoughtfully trying to express what this must be; reduced
+      to the mere synthetic interjection &ldquo;My!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s it, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Hugh said for the consecration of such a moral;
+      &ldquo;he won&rsquo;t quit it without a hard struggle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender hereupon at last gave himself quite gaily away as to his high
+      calculation of impunity. &ldquo;Well, I guess he won&rsquo;t struggle too hard for me
+      to hold on to him if I <i>want</i> to!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the thick of the conflict then, however that may be,&rdquo; Hugh returned,
+      &ldquo;don&rsquo;t forget what I&rsquo;ve urged on you&mdash;the claim of our desolate
+      country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But his friend had an answer to this. &ldquo;My natural interest, Mr. Crimble&mdash;considering
+      what I do for it&mdash;is in the claim of ours. But I wish you were on my
+      side!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so much,&rdquo; Hugh hungrily and truthfully laughed, &ldquo;as I wish you were
+      on mine!&rdquo; Decidedly, none the less, he had to go. &ldquo;Good-bye&mdash;for
+      another look here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached the doorway of the second room, where, however, his companion,
+      freshly alert at this, stayed him by a gesture. &ldquo;How much is she really
+      worth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;She&rsquo;?&rdquo; Hugh, staring a moment, was miles at sea. &ldquo;Lady Sandgate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her great-grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A responsible answer was prevented&mdash;the butler was again with them;
+      he had opened wide the other door and he named to Mr. Bender the personage
+      under his convoy. &ldquo;Lord John!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh caught this from the inner threshold, and it gave him his escape.
+      &ldquo;Oh, ask <i>that</i> friend!&rdquo; With which he sought the further passage to
+      the staircase and street, while Lord John arrived in charge of Mr. Gotch,
+      who, having remarked to the two occupants of the front drawing-room that
+      her ladyship would come, left them together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Theign&rsquo;s not yet here!&rdquo; Lord John had to resign himself as he
+      greeted his American ally. &ldquo;But he told me I should find you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has kept me waiting,&rdquo; that gentleman returned&mdash;&ldquo;but what&rsquo;s the
+      matter with him anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The matter with him&rdquo;&mdash;Lord John treated such ignorance as irritating&mdash;&ldquo;must
+      of course be this beastly thing in the &lsquo;Journal.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender proclaimed, on the other hand, his incapacity to seize such
+      connections. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with the beastly thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, aren&rsquo;t you aware that the stiffest bit of it is a regular dig at
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you call <i>that</i> a regular dig you can&rsquo;t have had much experience
+      of the Papers. I&rsquo;ve known them to dig much deeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had <i>no</i> experience of such horrid attacks, thank goodness; but
+      do you mean to say,&rdquo; asked Lord John with the surprise of his own
+      delicacy, &ldquo;that you don&rsquo;t unpleasantly feel it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel it where, my dear sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, God bless me, such impertinence, everywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All over me at once?&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender took refuge in easy humour. &ldquo;Well,
+      I&rsquo;m a large man&mdash;so when I want to feel so much I look out for
+      something good. But what, if he suffers from the blot on his ermine&mdash;ain&rsquo;t
+      that what you wear?&mdash;does our friend propose to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had a demur, which was immediately followed by the apprehension
+      of support in his uncertainty. Lady Sandgate was before them, having
+      reached them through the other room, and to her he at once referred the
+      question. &ldquo;What <i>will</i> Theign propose, do you think, Lady Sandgate,
+      to do about it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She breathed both her hospitality and her vagueness. &ldquo;To &lsquo;do&rsquo;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know about the thing in the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo;&mdash;awfully offensive
+      all round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;d be even a little pinch for <i>you</i> in it,&rdquo; Mr. Bender said to
+      her&mdash;&ldquo;if you were bent on fitting the shoe!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, she met it all as gaily as was compatible with a firm look at her
+      elder guest while she took her place with them. &ldquo;Oh, the shoes of such
+      monsters as that are much too big for poor <i>me!</i>&rdquo; But she was more
+      specific for Lord John. &ldquo;I know only what Grace has just told me; but
+      since it&rsquo;s a question of footgear dear Theign will certainly&mdash;what
+      you may call&mdash;take his stand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John welcomed this assurance. &ldquo;If I know him he&rsquo;ll take it
+      splendidly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s attention was genial, though rather more detached. &ldquo;And what&mdash;while
+      he&rsquo;s about it&mdash;will he take it particularly <i>on?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we&rsquo;ve plenty of things, thank heaven,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;for a man
+      in Theign&rsquo;s position to hold fast by!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John freely confirmed it. &ldquo;Scores and scores&mdash;rather! And I will
+      say for us that, with the rotten way things seem going, the fact may soon
+      become a real convenience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender seemed struck&mdash;and not unsympathetic. &ldquo;I see that your
+      system would be rather a fraud if you hadn&rsquo;t pretty well fixed <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate spoke as one at present none the less substantially warned
+      and convinced. &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t, however, alter the fact that we&rsquo;ve thus in our
+      ears the first growl of an outcry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Lord John concurred, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve unmistakably the first growl of an
+      outcry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s judgment on the matter paused at sight of Lord Theign,
+      introduced and announced, as Lord John spoke, by Gotch; but with the
+      result of his addressing directly the person so presenting himself. &ldquo;Why,
+      they tell me that what this means, Lord Theign, is the first growl of an
+      outcry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The appearance of the most eminent figure in the group might have been
+      held in itself to testify to some such truth; in the sense at least that a
+      certain conscious radiance, a gathered light of battle in his lordship&rsquo;s
+      aspect would have been explained by his having taken the full measure&mdash;an
+      inner success with which he glowed&mdash;of some high provocation. He was
+      flushed, but he bore it as the ensign of his house; he was so admirably,
+      vividly dressed, for the morning hour and for his journey, that he shone
+      as with the armour of a knight; and the whole effect of him, from head to
+      foot, with every jerk of his unconcern and every flash of his ease, was to
+      call attention to his being utterly unshaken and knowing perfectly what he
+      was about. It was at this happy pitch that he replied to the prime
+      upsetter of his peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid I don&rsquo;t know what anything means to <i>you</i>, Mr. Bender&mdash;but
+      it&rsquo;s exactly to find out that I&rsquo;ve asked you, with our friend John, kindly
+      to meet me here. For a very brief conference, dear lady, by your good
+      leave,&rdquo; he went on to Lady Sandgate; &ldquo;at which I&rsquo;m only too pleased that
+      you yourself should assist. The &lsquo;first growl&rsquo; of any outcry, I may mention
+      to you all, affects me no more than the last will&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I&rsquo;m delighted to gather&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate took him straight up&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      you don&rsquo;t let go your inestimable Cure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He at first quite stared superior&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;Let go&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;but then treated
+      it with a lighter touch. &ldquo;Upon my honour I might, you know&mdash;that dose
+      of the daily press has made me feel so fit! I arrive at any rate,&rdquo; he
+      pursued to the others and in particular to Mr. Bender, &ldquo;I arrive with my
+      decision taken&mdash;which I&rsquo;ve thought may perhaps interest you. If that
+      tuppeny rot <i>is</i> an attempt at an outcry I simply nip it in the bud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John rejoicingly approved. &ldquo;Absolutely the only way&mdash;with the
+      least self-respect&mdash;to treat it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, on the other hand, sounded a sceptical note. &ldquo;But are you
+      sure it&rsquo;s so easy, Theign, to hush up a <i>real</i> noise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain&rsquo;t what I&rsquo;d call a real one, Lady Sandgate,&rdquo; Mr. Bender said; &ldquo;you
+      can generally distinguish a real one from the squeak of two or three mice!
+      But granted mice do affect you, Lord Theign, it will interest me to hear
+      what sort of a trap&mdash;by what you say&mdash;you propose to set for
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must allow me to measure, myself, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; his lordship replied,
+      &ldquo;the importance of a gross freedom publicly used with my absolutely
+      personal proceedings and affairs; to the cause and origin of any definite
+      report of which&mdash;in such circles!&mdash;I&rsquo;m afraid I rather wonder if
+      you yourself can&rsquo;t give me a clue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took Mr. Bender a minute to do justice to these stately remarks. &ldquo;You
+      rather wonder if I&rsquo;ve talked of how I feel about your detaining in your
+      hands my Beautiful Duchess&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;ve already published her as &lsquo;yours&rsquo;&mdash;with your <i>power</i>
+      of publication!&rdquo; Lord Theign coldly laughed,&mdash;&ldquo;of course I trace the
+      connection!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Benders acceptance of responsibility clearly cost him no shade of a
+      pang. &ldquo;Why, I haven&rsquo;t for quite a while talked of a blessed other thing&mdash;and
+      I&rsquo;m capable of growing more profane over my <i>not</i> getting her than I
+      guess any one would dare to be if I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ll certainly not &lsquo;get&rsquo; her, Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate, as for
+      reasons of her own, bravely trumpeted; &ldquo;and even if there were a chance of
+      it don&rsquo;t you see that your way wouldn&rsquo;t be publicly to abuse our noble
+      friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender but beamed, in reply, upon that personage. &ldquo;Oh, I guess our
+      noble friend knows I <i>have</i> to talk big about big things. You
+      understand, sir, the scream of the eagle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll forgive you,&rdquo; Lord Theign civilly returned, &ldquo;all the big talk you
+      like if you&rsquo;ll now understand <i>me</i>. My retort to that hireling pack
+      shall be at once to dispose of a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender rather failed to follow. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s what you wanted to do
+      before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said his lordship&mdash;&ldquo;I make a difference. It&rsquo;s what you
+      wanted me to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mystification, however, continued. &ldquo;And you were <i>not</i>&mdash;as
+      you seemed then&mdash;willing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign waived cross-questions. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m willing <i>now</i>&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time,&rdquo; he added
+      with all authority, &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t have our Duchess!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t have our Duchess!&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord John, as before the altar of
+      patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t have our Duchess!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace
+      that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet
+      sociability as she added: &ldquo;I wish he&rsquo;d tell you too, you dreadful rich
+      thing, that you can&rsquo;t have anything at all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that rigour.
+      &ldquo;Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what&mdash;as it <i>is</i>,&rdquo; Mr. Bender asked&mdash;&ldquo;becomes of my
+      unhappy grievance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t a really great capture make up to you for that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have&mdash;and
+      it depends, don&rsquo;t you see, on how you measure the size.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. &ldquo;Shouldn&rsquo;t you
+      like to go back there and take the measure yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. &ldquo;Look again at that
+      tottering Moretto?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, its size&mdash;as you say&mdash;isn&rsquo;t in <i>any</i> light a
+      negligible quantity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that&mdash;big as it is&mdash;it hasn&rsquo;t yet stopped growing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord
+      Theign himself meant &ldquo;It&rsquo;s more to the purpose,&rdquo; he said to Mr. Bender,
+      &ldquo;that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words the
+      very essence, of my plan of campaign&mdash;which is to put the picture at
+      once on view.&rdquo; He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. &ldquo;On
+      view as a thing definitely disposed of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, I say, I say!&rdquo; cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to high
+      admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s approval was more qualified. &ldquo;But on view, dear Theign,
+      how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With one of those pushing people in Bond Street.&rdquo; And then as for the
+      crushing climax of his policy: &ldquo;As a Mantovano pure and simple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my dear man,&rdquo; she quavered, &ldquo;if it <i>isn&rsquo;t</i> one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him and he
+      let out sail. &ldquo;Lady Sand-gate, it&rsquo;s going, by all that&rsquo;s&mdash;well,
+      interesting, to <i>be</i> one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. &ldquo;You seize me? We <i>treat</i> it
+      as one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. &ldquo;We <i>treat</i> it as one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought&mdash;he
+      even gave it back larger. &ldquo;As the long-lost Number Eight!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign happily seized <i>him</i>. &ldquo;That will be it&mdash;to a charm!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will make them,&rdquo; Mr. Bender asked, &ldquo;madder than anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His patron&mdash;if not his client&mdash;put it more nobly. &ldquo;It will
+      markedly affirm my attitude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may create all it will!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if <i>you</i> don&rsquo;t mind it, <i>I</i> don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Mr. Bender concluded.
+      But though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid
+      application of it elsewhere. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll put the thing on view right off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As soon as the proper arrangement&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You put off your journey to <i>make</i> it?&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate at once broke
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign bethought himself&mdash;with the effect of a gracious
+      confidence in the others. &ldquo;Not if these friends will act.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I guess we&rsquo;ll <i>act!</i>&rdquo; Mr. Bender declared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, <i>won&rsquo;t</i> we though!&rdquo; Lord John re-echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand then I have an interest?&rdquo; Mr. Bender went on to Lord
+      Theign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship&rsquo;s irony met it. &ldquo;I accept that complication&mdash;which so
+      much simplifies!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet also have a liberty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where else would be those you&rsquo;ve taken? The point is,&rdquo; said Lord Theign,
+      &ldquo;that <i>I</i> have a show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It settled Mr. Bender. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll <i>fix</i> your show.&rdquo; He snatched up
+      his hat. &ldquo;Lord John, come right round!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the
+      whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking leave
+      of the others he gave it even his applause. &ldquo;The fellow can do anything
+      anywhere!&rdquo; And he hastily followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their
+      companion&rsquo;s enthusiasm. &ldquo;That may be true of Mr. Bender&mdash;for it&rsquo;s
+      dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the question,
+      &ldquo;I dare say a terror will help me.&rdquo; He had other business to which he at
+      once gave himself. &ldquo;And now, if you please, for that girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send her to you,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;if you can&rsquo;t stay to luncheon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve three or four things to do,&rdquo; he pleaded, &ldquo;and I lunch with Kitty at
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She submitted in that case&mdash;but disappointedly. &ldquo;With Berkeley Square
+      then you&rsquo;ve time. But I confess I don&rsquo;t quite grasp the so odd inspiration
+      that you&rsquo;ve set those men to carry out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. &ldquo;Then it needn&rsquo;t
+      trouble you, dear&mdash;it&rsquo;s enough that I myself go straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you so very convinced it&rsquo;s straight?&rdquo;&mdash;she wouldn&rsquo;t be a bore to
+      him, but she couldn&rsquo;t not be a blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the world else is it,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;when, having good reasons, one
+      acts on &lsquo;em?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have an immense array,&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;to fly so in the face of
+      Opinion!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Opinion&rsquo;?&rdquo; he commented&mdash;&ldquo;I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing,
+      as I&rsquo;m taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my
+      umbrella and send it about its business.&rdquo; To which he added with more
+      reproach: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s enough to have been dished by Grace&mdash;without <i>your</i>
+      falling away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s only my great affection&mdash;and
+      all that these years have been for us: <i>they</i> it is that make me wish
+      you weren&rsquo;t so proud.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us&mdash;a
+      very charming matter. But &lsquo;proud&rsquo; is it you find me of the daughter who
+      does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point of
+      this. &ldquo;Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair&mdash;but are you sure
+      you can really bear to see Grace?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seem expected indeed to bear much,&rdquo; he said with more and more of his
+      parental bitterness, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t know that I&rsquo;m yet in a funk before my
+      child. Doesn&rsquo;t she <i>want</i> to see me, with any contrition, after the
+      trick she has played me?&rdquo; And then as his companion&rsquo;s answer failed: &ldquo;In
+      spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no
+      sign of her explaining&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hostess raised her head. &ldquo;She does want to see you, I know; but you
+      must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough&mdash;when it was
+      you who declined to see <i>her</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?&rdquo;&mdash;he was
+      entirely reminiscent. &ldquo;What I recall is that even if I had condoned&mdash;that
+      evening&mdash;her deception of <i>me</i> in my folly, I still loathed, for
+      my friend&rsquo;s sake, her practical joke on poor John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. &ldquo;It was your very
+      complaint that your own appeal to her <i>became</i> an appeal from
+      herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he returned, so well he remembered, &ldquo;she was about as civil to me
+      then&mdash;picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!&mdash;as
+      that devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant
+      remarks, for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His good friend showily balanced and might have been about to reply with
+      weight; but what she in fact brought out was only: &ldquo;I see you&rsquo;re right
+      about it: I must let her speak for herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I shall greatly prefer to her speaking&mdash;as she did so
+      extraordinarily, out of the blue, at Dedborough, upon my honour&mdash;for
+      the wonderful friends she picks up: the picture-man introduced by her
+      (what was his name?) who regularly &lsquo;cheeked&rsquo; me, as I suppose he&rsquo;d call
+      it, in my own house, and whom I hope, by the way, that under this roof
+      she&rsquo;s not able to be quite so thick with!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Lady Sandgate winced at that vain dream she managed not to betray it,
+      and she had, in any embarrassment on this matter, the support, as we know,
+      of her own tried policy. &ldquo;She leads her life under this roof very much as
+      under yours; and she&rsquo;s not of an age, remember, for me to pretend either
+      to watch her movements or to control her contacts.&rdquo; Leaving him however
+      thus to perform his pleasure the charming woman had before she went an
+      abrupt change of tone. &ldquo;Whatever your relations with others, dear friend,
+      don&rsquo;t forget that <i>I&rsquo;m</i> still here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign accepted the reminder, though, the circumstances being such,
+      it scarce moved him to ecstasy. &ldquo;That you&rsquo;re here, thank heaven, is of
+      course a comfort&mdash;or would be if you understood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; she submissively sighed, &ldquo;if I don&rsquo;t always &lsquo;understand&rsquo; a spirit so
+      much higher than mine and a situation so much more complicated, certainly,
+      I at least always defer, I at least always&mdash;well, what can I say but
+      worship?&rdquo; And then as he remained not other than finely passive, &ldquo;The old
+      altar, Theign,&rdquo; she went on&mdash;&ldquo;and a spark of the old fire!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not looked at her on this&mdash;it was as if he shrank, with his
+      preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left hand.
+      &ldquo;So I feel!&rdquo; he was, however, kind enough to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do feel!&rdquo; she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand to
+      her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; reached the
+      threshold of the other room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I smoke?&rdquo; he asked before she had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about for a
+      match. But something else occurred to him. &ldquo;You must come to Victoria.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather!&rdquo; she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Left alone he had a moment&rsquo;s meditation where he stood; it found issue in
+      an articulate &ldquo;Poor dear thing!&rdquo;&mdash;an exclamation marked at once with
+      patience and impatience, with resignation and ridicule. After which,
+      waiting for his daughter, Lord Theign slowly and absently roamed, finding
+      matches at last and lighting his cigarette&mdash;all with an air of
+      concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his
+      finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom&mdash;if gloom it was&mdash;dropped,
+      however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene
+      through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he jerked out at sight of her&mdash;which she had to content herself
+      with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing little
+      to qualify its dryness. &ldquo;I take it for granted that you know I&rsquo;m within a
+      couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of health.&rdquo; And then
+      as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her possession of this
+      fact: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought accordingly that before I go I should&mdash;on this
+      first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at Dedborough&mdash;like
+      to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my absence, on the
+      painfully false position in which you there placed me.&rdquo; He carried himself
+      restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness, to which her
+      stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly passive&mdash;possibly
+      indeed a trifle portentous. &ldquo;If you had plotted and planned it in
+      advance,&rdquo; he none the less firmly pursued, &ldquo;if you had acted from some
+      uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn&rsquo;t have arranged more perfectly to
+      incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and purposes, make light of
+      me and insult me.&rdquo; Even before this charge she made no sign; with her eyes
+      now attached to the ground she let him proceed. &ldquo;I had practically
+      guaranteed to our excellent, our charming friend, your favourable view of
+      his appeal&mdash;which you yourself too, remember, had left him in so
+      little doubt of!&mdash;so that, having by your performance so egregiously
+      failed him, I have the pleasure of their coming down on me for
+      explanations, for compensations, and for God knows what besides.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of her
+      attention. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong; but may
+      I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as &lsquo;they&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;They&rsquo;?&rdquo; he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to his
+      more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he has
+      tried to pass. &ldquo;Why, your own sister to begin with&mdash;whose interest in
+      what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise; and <i>his</i>
+      people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular, who only
+      wanted to be charming to you, and who are as good people, and as pleasant
+      and as clever, damn it, when all&rsquo;s said and done, as any others that are
+      likely to come your way.&rdquo; It clearly did his lordship good to work out
+      thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to him and glowed with
+      irresistible colour. &ldquo;Letting alone gallant John himself, most amiable of
+      men, about whose merits and whose claims you appear to have pretended to
+      agree with me just that you might, when he presumed, poor chap, ardently
+      to urge them, deal him with the more cruel effect that calculated blow on
+      the mouth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was clear that in the girl&rsquo;s great gravity embarrassment had no share.
+      &ldquo;They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you&rsquo;re obliged
+      to come down on <i>me?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Assuredly&mdash;for some better satisfaction than your just moping here
+      without a sign!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a sign of what, father?&rdquo; she asked&mdash;as helpless as a lone
+      islander scanning the horizon for a sail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, the
+      predicament into which you&rsquo;ve put me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t it occurred to you in the least that you&rsquo;ve rather put <i>me</i>
+      into one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. &ldquo;I put you certainly in
+      the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlement in life&mdash;which
+      all the elements that would make for your enjoying it had every appearance
+      of successfully commending to you.&rdquo; The perfect readiness of which on his
+      lips had, like a higher wave, the virtue of lifting and dropping him to
+      still more tangible ground. &ldquo;And if I understand you aright as wishing to
+      know whether I apologise for that zeal, why you take a most preposterous
+      view of our relation as father and daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand me no better than I fear I understand you,&rdquo; Lady Grace
+      returned, &ldquo;if what you expect of me is really to take back my words to
+      Lord John.&rdquo; And then as he didn&rsquo;t answer, while their breach gaped like a
+      jostled wound, &ldquo;Have you seriously come to propose&mdash;and from <i>him</i>
+      again,&rdquo; she added&mdash;&ldquo;that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lend
+      myself to your beautiful arrangement?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for his
+      dignity, not give way to passion. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come, above all, for <i>this</i>,
+      I may say, Grace: to remind you of whom you&rsquo;re addressing when you jibe at
+      me, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand&mdash;exactly as to
+      whether you judged us to have actively <i>incurred</i> your treatment of
+      our unhappy friend, to have brought it upon us, he and I, by my refusal to
+      discuss with you at such a crisis the question of my disposition of a
+      particular item of my property. I&rsquo;ve only to look at you, for that
+      matter,&rdquo; Lord Theign continued&mdash;always with a finer point and a
+      higher consistency as his rehearsal of his wrongs broadened&mdash;&ldquo;to have
+      my inquiry, as it seems to me, eloquently answered. You flounced away from
+      poor John, you took, as he tells me, &lsquo;his head off,&rsquo; just to repay me for
+      what you chose to regard as my snub on the score of your challenging my
+      entertainment of a possible purchaser; a rebuke launched at me,
+      practically, in the presence of a most inferior person, a stranger and an
+      intruder, from whom you had all the air of taking your cue for naming me
+      the great condition on which you&rsquo;d gratify my hope. Am I to understand, in
+      other words,&rdquo;&mdash;and his lordship mounted to a climax&mdash;&ldquo;that you
+      sent us about our business because I failed to gratify <i>your</i> hope:
+      that of my knocking under to your sudden monstrous pretension to lay down
+      the law for my choice of ways and means of raising, to my best
+      convenience, a considerable sum of money? You&rsquo;ll be so good as to
+      understand, once for all, that I recognise there no right of interference
+      from any quarter&mdash;and also to let that knowledge govern your
+      behaviour in my absence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace had thus for some minutes waited on his words&mdash;waited even
+      as almost with anxiety for the safe conduct he might look to from some of
+      the more extravagant of them. But he at least felt at the end&mdash;if it
+      was an end&mdash;all he owed them; so that there was nothing for her but
+      to accept as achieved his dreadful felicity. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re very angry with me,
+      and I hope you won&rsquo;t feel me simply &lsquo;aggravating&rsquo; if I say that, thinking
+      everything over, I&rsquo;ve done my best to allow for that. But I <i>can</i>
+      answer your question if I do answer it by saying that my discovery of your
+      possible sacrifice of one of our most beautiful things didn&rsquo;t predispose
+      me to decide in favour of a person&mdash;however &lsquo;backed&rsquo; by you&mdash;for
+      whose benefit the sacrifice was to take place. Frankly,&rdquo; the girl pushed
+      on, &ldquo;I did quite hate, for the moment, everything that might make for such
+      a mistake; and took the darkest view, let me also confess, of every one,
+      without exception, connected with it I interceded with you, earnestly, for
+      our precious picture, and you wouldn&rsquo;t on any terms <i>have</i> my
+      intercession. On top of that Lord John blundered in, without timeliness or
+      tact&mdash;and I&rsquo;m afraid that, as I hadn&rsquo;t been the least in love with
+      him even before, he did have to take the consequence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as all he
+      could possibly want. &ldquo;You recognise then that your reception of him <i>was</i>
+      purely vindictive!&mdash;the meaning of which is that unless my conduct of
+      my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens to
+      square with your superior wisdom you&rsquo;ll put me under boycott all round!
+      While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charming
+      friend&rsquo;s lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand an
+      example, what account have you to offer of the scene you made me there
+      before that fellow&mdash;your confederate, as he had all the air of being!&mdash;by
+      giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminently done with him
+      after his remarkable display, you at least were but the more determined to
+      see him keep it up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s justification, clearly, was very present to her, and not less
+      obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding every
+      side-issue, keep it very simple, &ldquo;The only account I can give you, I
+      think, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that I
+      felt&mdash;well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,
+      I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn&rsquo;t do such
+      things. I care, if you like, to indiscretion&mdash;I care, if you like, to
+      offence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you before
+      you leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I&rsquo;m ready to cry out
+      to you that you oughtn&rsquo;t, you oughtn&rsquo;t, you oughtn&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,
+      checked her as in an act really of violence&mdash;save that, like an
+      inflamed young priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her
+      message. &ldquo;Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter&mdash;no &lsquo;crying
+      out,&rsquo; if you please!&rdquo; After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still
+      kept her lighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a
+      minute, inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections,
+      taking, as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new
+      strange measure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a
+      difference of tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had
+      supposed, so that the case might really call for some coolness. &ldquo;You keep
+      bad company, Grace&mdash;it pays the devil with your sense of proportion.
+      If you make this row when I sell a picture, what will be left to you when
+      I forge a cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you had arrived at the necessity of forging a cheque,&rdquo; she answered,
+      &ldquo;I should then resign myself to that of your selling a picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not short of that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not short of that. Not one of ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said his lordship with his best and coldest amusement,
+      &ldquo;sell one of somebody else&rsquo;s!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was, however, not disconcerted. &ldquo;Other people do other things&mdash;they
+      appear to have done them, and to be doing them, all about us. But <i>we</i>
+      have been so decently different&mdash;always and ever. We&rsquo;ve never done
+      anything disloyal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Disloyal&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;he was more largely amazed and even interested now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace stuck to her word. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what it seems to <i>me!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to you&rdquo;&mdash;and his sarcasm here was easy&mdash;&ldquo;more disloyal
+      to sell a picture than to buy one? Because we didn&rsquo;t paint &lsquo;em all
+      ourselves, you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She threw up impatient hands. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t ask you either to paint or to buy&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>that&rsquo;s</i> a mercy!&rdquo; he interrupted, riding his irony hard; &ldquo;and
+      I&rsquo;m glad to hear you at least let me off <i>such</i> efforts! However, if
+      it strikes you as gracefully filial to apply to your father&rsquo;s conduct so
+      invidious a word,&rdquo; he went on less scathingly, &ldquo;you must take from him, in
+      your turn, his quite other view of what makes disloyalty&mdash;understanding
+      distinctly, by the same token, that he enjoins on you not to give an
+      odious illustration of it, while he&rsquo;s away, by discussing and deploring
+      with any <i>one</i> of your extraordinary friends any aspect or feature
+      whatever of his walk and conversation. That&mdash;pressed as I am for
+      time,&rdquo; he went on with a glance at his watch while she remained silent&mdash;&ldquo;is
+      the main sense of what I have to say to you; so that I count on your
+      perfect conformity. When you have told me that I <i>may</i> so count&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      casting about for his hat he espied it and went to take it up&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      shall more cordially bid you good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His daughter looked as if she had been for some time expecting the law
+      thus imposed upon her&mdash;had been seeing where he must come out; but in
+      spite of this preparation she made him wait for his reply in such tension
+      as he had himself created. &ldquo;To Kitty I&rsquo;ve practically said nothing&mdash;and
+      she herself can tell you why: I&rsquo;ve in fact scarcely seen her this
+      fortnight. Putting aside then Amy Sandgate, the only person to whom I&rsquo;ve
+      spoken&mdash;of your &lsquo;sacrifice,&rsquo; as I suppose you&rsquo;ll let me call it?&mdash;is
+      Mr. Hugh Crimble, whom you talk of as my &lsquo;confederate&rsquo; at Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign recovered the name with relief. &ldquo;Mr. Hugh Crimble&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      it!&mdash;whom you so amazingly caused to be present, and apparently
+      invited to be active, at a business that so little concerned him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He certainly took upon himself to be interested, as I had hoped he would.
+      But it was because I had taken upon <i>my</i> self&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To act, yes,&rdquo; Lord Theign broke in, &ldquo;with the grossest want of delicacy!
+      Well, it&rsquo;s from that exactly that you&rsquo;ll now forbear; and &lsquo;interested&rsquo; as
+      he may be&mdash;for which I&rsquo;m deucedly obliged to him!&mdash;you&rsquo;ll not
+      speak to Mr. Crimble again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never again?&rdquo;&mdash;the girl put it as for full certitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never of the question that I thus exclude. You may chatter your fill,&rdquo;
+       said his lordship curtly, &ldquo;about any others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the particular question you forbid,&rdquo; Grace returned with great
+      force, but as if saying something very reasonable&mdash;&ldquo;that question is
+      <i>the</i> question we care about: it&rsquo;s our very ground of conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; her father decreed, &ldquo;your conversation will please to <i>dispense</i>
+      with a ground; or you&rsquo;ll perhaps, better still&mdash;if that&rsquo;s the only
+      way!&mdash;dispense with your conversation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace took a moment as if to examine this more closely. &ldquo;You require
+      of me not to communicate with Mr. Crimble at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most assuredly I require it&mdash;since it&rsquo;s to that you insist on
+      reducing me.&rdquo; He didn&rsquo;t look reduced, the master of Dedborough, as he
+      spoke&mdash;which was doubtless precisely because he held his head so high
+      to affirm what he suffered. &ldquo;Is it so essential to your comfort,&rdquo; he
+      demanded, &ldquo;to hear him, or to make him, abuse me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Abusing&rsquo; you, father dear, has nothing whatever to do with it!&rdquo;&mdash;his
+      daughter had fairly lapsed, with a despairing gesture, to the tenderness
+      involved in her compassion for his perversity. &ldquo;We look at the thing in a
+      much larger way,&rdquo; she pursued, not heeding that she drew from him a sound
+      of scorn for her &ldquo;larger.&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s of our Treasure itself we talk&mdash;and
+      of what can be <i>done</i> in such cases; though with a close application,
+      I admit, to the case that you embody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked as with absurd curiosity, &ldquo;I embody a case?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonderfully, father&mdash;as you do everything; and it&rsquo;s the fact of its
+      being exceptional,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;that makes it so difficult to deal
+      with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship had a gape for it. &ldquo;&lsquo;To deal with&rsquo;? You&rsquo;re undertaking to
+      &lsquo;deal&rsquo; with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled more frankly now, as for a rift in the gloom. &ldquo;Well, how can we
+      help it if you <i>will</i> be a case?&rdquo; And then as her tone but visibly
+      darkened his wonder: &ldquo;What we&rsquo;ve set our hearts on is saving the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What you&rsquo;ve set your hearts on, in other words, is working straight
+      against me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she persisted without heat. &ldquo;What we&rsquo;ve set our hearts on is working
+      for England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray who in the world&rsquo;s &lsquo;England,&rsquo;&rdquo; he cried in his stupefaction,
+      &ldquo;unless I am?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear, dear father,&rdquo; she pleaded, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s all we <i>want</i> you to be! I
+      mean&rdquo;&mdash;she didn&rsquo;t fear firmly to force it home&mdash;&ldquo;in the real,
+      the right, the grand sense; the sense that, you see, is so intensely
+      ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Ours&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;he couldn&rsquo;t but again throw back her word at her. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t
+      it, damn you, just <i>in</i> ours&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; she interrupted&mdash;&ldquo;not in <i>ours!</i>&rdquo; She smiled at him
+      still, though it was strained, as if he really ought to perceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he glared as at a senseless juggle. &ldquo;What and who the devil are you
+      talking about? What are &lsquo;we,&rsquo; the whole blest lot of us, pray, but the
+      best and most English thing in the country: people walking&mdash;and
+      riding!&mdash;straight; doing, disinterestedly, most of the difficult and
+      all the thankless jobs; minding their own business, above all, and
+      expecting others to mind theirs?&rdquo; So he let her &ldquo;have&rdquo; the stout sound
+      truth, as it were&mdash;and so the direct force of it clearly might, by
+      his view, have made her reel. &ldquo;You and I, my lady, and your two decent
+      brothers, God be thanked for them, and mine into the bargain, and all the
+      rest, the jolly lot of us, take us together&mdash;make us numerous enough
+      without any foreign aid or mixture: if that&rsquo;s what I understand you to
+      mean!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand me at all&mdash;evidently; and above all I see you
+      don&rsquo;t want to!&rdquo; she had the bravery to add, &ldquo;By &lsquo;our&rsquo; sense of what&rsquo;s due
+      to the nation in such a case I mean Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s and mine&mdash;and
+      nobody&rsquo;s else at all; since, as I tell you, it&rsquo;s only with him I&rsquo;ve
+      talked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It gave him then, every inch of him showed, the full, the grotesque
+      measure of the scandal he faced. &ldquo;So that &lsquo;you and Mr. Crimble&rsquo; represent
+      the standard, for me, in your opinion, of the proprieties and duties of
+      our house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, she was too earnest&mdash;as she clearly wished to let him see&mdash;to
+      mind his perversion of it. &ldquo;I express to you the way we feel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s most striking to hear, certainly, what you express&rdquo;&mdash;he had
+      positively to laugh for it; &ldquo;and you speak of him, with your insufferable
+      &lsquo;we,&rsquo; as if you were presenting him as your&mdash;God knows what! You&rsquo;ve
+      enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to have arrived at such
+      unanimity.&rdquo; And then, as if to fall into no trap he might somehow be
+      laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebutted nothing: &ldquo;You must
+      see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be able to speak of yourself
+      without him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we&rsquo;re fellow-critics, father&rdquo;&mdash;she accepted this opening. &ldquo;I
+      perfectly adopt your term.&rdquo; But it took her a minute to go further. &ldquo;I saw
+      Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saw him &lsquo;here&rsquo;?&rdquo; Lord Theign amazedly asked. &ldquo;He <i>comes</i> to you here&mdash;and
+      Amy Sandgate has been silent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t her business to tell you&mdash;since, you see, she could leave
+      it to me. And I quite expect,&rdquo; Lady Grace then produced, &ldquo;that he&rsquo;ll come
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It brought down with a bang all her father&rsquo;s authority. &ldquo;Then I simply
+      exact of you that you don&rsquo;t see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimming
+      cup. &ldquo;Is that what you <i>really</i> meant by your condition just now&mdash;that
+      when I do see him I shall not speak to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I &lsquo;really meant&rsquo; is what I really mean&mdash;that you bow to the law
+      I lay upon you and drop the man altogether.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have nothing to do with him at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have nothing to do with him at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In fact&rdquo;&mdash;she took it in&mdash;&ldquo;give him wholly up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an impatient gesture. &ldquo;You sound as if I asked you to give up a
+      fortune!&rdquo; And then, though she had phrased his idea without consternation&mdash;verily
+      as if it had been in the balance for her&mdash;he might have been moved by
+      something that gathered in her eyes. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re so wrapped up in him that the
+      precious sacrifice is like <i>that</i> sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace took her time&mdash;but showed, as her eyes continued to hold
+      him, what <i>had</i> gathered. &ldquo;I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father&mdash;I
+      think him clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants&mdash;I want it,
+      I think, really, as much; and I don&rsquo;t at all deny that he has helped to
+      make me so want it. But that doesn&rsquo;t matter. I&rsquo;ll wholly cease to see him,
+      I&rsquo;ll give him up forever, if&mdash;if&mdash;!&rdquo; She faltered, however, she
+      hung fire with a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she began
+      and stopped again, &ldquo;If&mdash;if&mdash;!&rdquo; while her father caught her up
+      with irritation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;If,&rsquo; my lady? If <i>what</i>, please?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender&mdash;and never
+      make another to any one else!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood staring as at the size of it&mdash;then translated it into his
+      own terms. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;ll obligingly announce to the world that I&rsquo;ve made an ass
+      of myself you&rsquo;ll kindly forbear from your united effort&mdash;the charming
+      pair of you&mdash;to show me up for one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this,
+      simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn&rsquo;t till
+      a minute passed that she said: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t agree to my compromise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of his
+      spirit. &ldquo;Good God, I&rsquo;m to &lsquo;compromise&rsquo; on top of everything?&mdash;I&rsquo;m to
+      let you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I&rsquo;m
+      entitled to settle with you as things have ever <i>been</i> settled among
+      us, by uttering to you my last parental word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t care enough then for what you name?&rdquo;&mdash;she took it up as
+      scarce heeding now what he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For putting an end to your odious commerce&mdash;? I give you the
+      measure, on the contrary,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;of how much I care: as you
+      give me, very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       But his other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which he
+      broke off in turn as for disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with an effect of decently shielding herself&mdash;the unuttered
+      meaning came so straight&mdash;that she substituted words of her own. &ldquo;Of
+      what it costs me to redeem the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To lose your tenth-rate friend&rdquo;&mdash;he spoke without scruple now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She instantly broke into ardent deprecation, pleading at once and warning.
+      &ldquo;Father, father, oh&mdash;! You hold the thing in your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled up before her again as to thrust the responsibility straight
+      back. &ldquo;My orders then are so much rubbish to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace held her ground, and they remained face to face in opposition
+      and accusation, neither making the other the sign of peace. But the girl
+      at least <i>had</i>, in her way, held out the olive-branch, while Lord
+      Theign had but reaffirmed his will. It was for her acceptance of this that
+      he searched her, her last word not having yet come. Before it had done so,
+      however, the door from the lobby opened and Mr. Gotch had regained their
+      presence. This appeared to determine in Lady Grace a view of the
+      importance of delay, which she signified to her companion in a &ldquo;Well&mdash;I
+      must think!&rdquo; For the butler positively resounded, and Hugh was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble!&rdquo; Mr. Gotch proclaimed&mdash;with the further extravagance of
+      projecting the visitor straight upon his lordship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Our young man showed another face than the face his friend had lately seen
+      him carry off, and he now turned it distressfully from that source of
+      inspiration to Lord Theign, who was flagrantly, even from this first
+      moment, no such source at all, and then from his noble adversary back
+      again, under pressure of difficulty and effort, to Lady Grace, whom he
+      directly addressed. &ldquo;Here I am again, you see&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got my news,
+      worse luck!&rdquo; But his manner to her father was the next instant more brisk.
+      &ldquo;I learned you were here, my lord; but as the case is important I told
+      them it was all right and came up. I&rsquo;ve been to my club,&rdquo; he added for the
+      girl, &ldquo;and found the tiresome thing&mdash;!&rdquo; But he broke down breathless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it isn&rsquo;t good?&rdquo; she cried with the highest concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruefully, yet not abjectly, he confessed, &ldquo;Not so good as I hoped. For I
+      assure you, my lord, I counted&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the report from Pappendick about the picture at Verona,&rdquo; Lady Grace
+      interruptingly explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh took it up, but, as we should well have seen, under embarrassment
+      dismally deeper; the ugly particular defeat he had to announce showing
+      thus, in his thought, for a more awkward force than any reviving
+      possibilities that he might have begun to balance against them. &ldquo;The man I
+      told <i>you</i> about also,&rdquo; he said to his formidable patron; &ldquo;whom I
+      went to Brussels to talk with and who, most kindly, has gone for us to
+      Verona. He has been able to get straight at <i>their</i> Mantovano, but
+      the brute horribly wires me that he doesn&rsquo;t quite see the thing; see, I
+      mean&rdquo;&mdash;and he gathered his two hearers together now in his overflow
+      of chagrin, conscious, with his break of the ice, more exclusively of that&mdash;&ldquo;my
+      vivid vital point, the absolute screaming identity of the two persons
+      represented. I still hold,&rdquo; he persuasively went on, &ldquo;that our man is
+      their man, but Pappendick decides that he isn&rsquo;t&mdash;and as Pappendick
+      has so <i>much</i> to be reckoned with of course I&rsquo;m awfully abashed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had remained what he had begun by being, immeasurably and
+      inaccessibly detached&mdash;only with his curiosity more moved than he
+      could help and as, on second thought, to see what sort of a still more
+      offensive fool the heated youth would really make of himself. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;you
+      seem indeed remarkably abashed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh clearly was thrown again, by the cold &ldquo;cut&rdquo; of this, colder than any
+      mere social ignoring, upon a sense of the damnably poor figure he did
+      offer; so that, while he straightened himself and kept a mastery of his
+      manner and a control of his reply, we should yet have felt his cheek
+      tingle. &ldquo;I backed my own judgment strongly, I know&mdash;and I&rsquo;ve got my
+      snub. But I don&rsquo;t in the least knock under.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the first authority in Europe doesn&rsquo;t care, I suppose, whether you
+      do or not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t <i>the</i> first authority in Europe, thank God,&rdquo; the young man
+      returned&mdash;&ldquo;though he is, I admit, one of the three or four first. And
+      I mean to appeal&mdash;I&rsquo;ve another shot in my locker,&rdquo; he went on with
+      his rather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. &ldquo;I had already written,
+      you see, to dear old Bardi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bardi of Milan?&rdquo;&mdash;she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the
+      appeal of his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament
+      was also for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken
+      without her father&rsquo;s presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any one to
+      perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. &ldquo;You know of him?&mdash;how
+      delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel,&rdquo; he quickly explained,
+      &ldquo;he must have <i>most</i> the instinct&mdash;and it has come over me since
+      that he&rsquo;d have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowing the
+      Verona picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had fairly hung on his lips. &ldquo;But does he know ours?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not ours yet. That is&rdquo;&mdash;he consciously and quickly took
+      himself up&mdash;&ldquo;not yours! But as Pap-pendick went to Verona for us I&rsquo;ve
+      asked Bardi to do us the great favour to come here&mdash;if Lord Theign
+      will be so good,&rdquo; he said, bethinking himself with a turn, &ldquo;as to let him
+      examine the Moretto.&rdquo; He faced again to the personage he mentioned, who,
+      simply standing off and watching, in concentrated interest as well as
+      detachment, this interview of his cool daughter and her still cooler
+      guest, had plainly &ldquo;elected,&rdquo; as it were, to give them rope to hang
+      themselves. Staring very hard at Hugh he met his appeal, but in a silence
+      clearly calculated; against which, however, the young man, bearing up,
+      made such head as he could. He offered his next word, that is, equally to
+      the two companions. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not at all impossible&mdash;for such curious
+      effects have been!&mdash;that the Dedborough picture seen <i>after</i> the
+      Verona will point a different moral from the Verona seen after the
+      Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so awfully <i>long</i> after&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; Lady Grace asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully long after&mdash;it was years ago that Pappen-dick, being in this
+      country for such purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when none of
+      you were there, or at least visible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh of course we don&rsquo;t see <i>every one!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;she heroically kept it
+      up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t see every one,&rdquo; Hugh bravely laughed, &ldquo;and that makes it all
+      the more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shall
+      really get Bardi,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;to go again to Verona&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last thing before coming here?&rdquo;&mdash;she had guessed before he could
+      say it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her for
+      assent. &ldquo;How happy they should like so to work for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we&rsquo;re a band of brothers,&rdquo; he returned&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;we few, we happy few&rsquo;&mdash;from
+      country to country&rdquo;; to which he added, gaining more ease for an eye at
+      Lord Theign: &ldquo;though we do have our little rubs and disputes, like
+      Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping <i>interest</i>
+      of it all; since,&rdquo; he developed and explained, for his elder friend&rsquo;s
+      benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially at least
+      recovered, &ldquo;when we&rsquo;re really &lsquo;hit&rsquo; over a case we&rsquo;ll do almost anything
+      in life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediately
+      appropriated what her father let alone. &ldquo;It must be so lovely to <i>feel</i>
+      so hit!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does spoil one,&rdquo; Hugh laughed, &ldquo;for milder joys. Of course what I have
+      to consider is the chance&mdash;putting it at the <i>merest</i> chance&mdash;of
+      Bardi&rsquo;s own wet blanket! But that&rsquo;s again so very small&mdash;though,&rdquo; he
+      pulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as an
+      almost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll retort upon me naturally
+      that I promised you the possibility of Pappendick&rsquo;s veto would be: all on
+      the poor dear old basis, you&rsquo;ll claim, of the wish father to the thought.
+      Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Only give me time!&rdquo;
+       he sublimely insisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can we prevent your using it?&rdquo; Lady Grace again interrupted; &ldquo;or the
+      fact either that if the worst comes to the worst&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing&rdquo;&mdash;he at once pursued&mdash;&ldquo;will always be at the least
+      the greatest of Morettos? Ah,&rdquo; he cried so cheerily that there was still a
+      freedom in it toward any it might concern, &ldquo;the worst sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t come to the
+      worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is that
+      supports me in the deep regret I have to express&rdquo;&mdash;and he faced Lord
+      Theign again&mdash;&ldquo;for any inconvenience I may have caused you by my
+      abortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yet more
+      than make up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, after the longest but the blankest contemplation of him,
+      broke hereupon, for the first time, that attitude of completely sustained
+      and separate silence which he had yet made compatible with his air of
+      having deeply noted every element of the scene&mdash;so that it was of
+      this full view his participation had effectively consisted, &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the
+      least idea, sir, what you&rsquo;re talking about!&rdquo; And he squarely turned his
+      back, strolling toward the other room, the threshold of which he the next
+      moment had passed, remaining scantily within, however, and in sight of the
+      others, not to say of ourselves; even though averted and ostensibly lost
+      in some scrutiny that might have had for its object the great enshrined
+      Lawrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, the richest
+      of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided by the width
+      of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then used for their
+      own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now over Hugh&rsquo;s
+      unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he must at once
+      act. Lady Grace&rsquo;s young arms conveyed to him by a despairing contrite
+      motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could do in his
+      presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to leave
+      the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair, for their
+      full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged, the charged give
+      and take of their gaze and, it might well have been imagined, of their
+      passion. Hugh had for an instant a show of hesitation&mdash;of the
+      arrested impulse, while he kept her father within range, to launch at that
+      personage before going some final remonstrance. It was the girl&rsquo;s raised
+      hand and gesture of warning that waved away for him such a mistake; he
+      decided, under her pressure, and after a last searching and answering look
+      at her reached the door and let himself out. The stillness was then
+      prolonged a minute by the further wait of the two others, Lord Theign
+      where he had been standing and his daughter on the spot from which she had
+      not moved. It presently ended in his lordship&rsquo;s turn about as if inferring
+      by the silence that the intruder had withdrawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that young man your lover?&rdquo; he said as he drew again near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had been
+      prepared. &ldquo;Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short time ago
+      demanded of me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy with
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that if he <i>should</i> be&mdash;what you ask me about&mdash;your
+      exaction would then be modified?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the
+      contrary,&rdquo; Lord Theign pronounced, &ldquo;rest on an immense new ground.
+      Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t the truth be before you, father, if you&rsquo;ll <i>think</i> a moment&mdash;without
+      extravagance?&rdquo; After which, while, as stiffly as ever&mdash;and it
+      probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly&mdash;he didn&rsquo;t rise to it,
+      she went on: &ldquo;If I <i>offered</i> you not again to see him, does that make
+      for you the appearance&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you offered it, you mean, on your condition&mdash;my promising not to
+      sell? I promised,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, &ldquo;absolutely nothing at all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She took him up with all expression. &ldquo;So I promised as little! But that I
+      should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your
+      curiosity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see <i>how</i>
+      wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. &ldquo;You risked your
+      offer for the great equivalent over which you&rsquo;ve so wildly worked yourself
+      up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve worked myself&mdash;that, I grant you and don&rsquo;t blush for! But
+      hardly so much as to renounce my &lsquo;lover&rsquo;&mdash;if,&rdquo; she prodigiously
+      smiled, &ldquo;I were so fortunate as to have one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You renounced poor John mightily easily&mdash;whom you were so fortunate
+      as to have!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. &ldquo;Do you call Lord John my
+      lover?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was your suitor most assuredly,&rdquo; Lord Theign inimitably said, though
+      without looking at her; &ldquo;and as strikingly encouraged as he was
+      respectfully ardent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Encouraged by <i>you</i>, dear father, beyond doubt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Encouraged&mdash;er&mdash;by every one: because you were (yes, you <i>were!</i>)
+      encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour as to
+      whether you didn&rsquo;t, on your honour, turn him off because of your just then
+      so stimulated views on the person who has been with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than she could
+      say&mdash;moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, by other
+      things than harshness: &ldquo;Oh father, father, father&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared to
+      give way to her sincerity. &ldquo;Well then if I <i>have</i> your denial I take
+      it as answering my whole question&mdash;in a manner that satisfies me. If
+      there&rsquo;s nothing, on your word, of that sort between you, you can all the
+      more drop him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said a moment ago that I should all the more in the other case&mdash;that
+      of there <i>being</i> something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He brushed away her logic-chopping. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re so keen then for past
+      remarks I take up your own words&mdash;I accept your own terms for your
+      putting an end to Mr. Crimble.&rdquo; To which, while, turning pale, she said
+      nothing, he added: &ldquo;You recognise that you profess yourself ready&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not again to see him,&rdquo; she now answered, &ldquo;if you tell me the picture&rsquo;s
+      safe? Yes, I recognise that I <i>was</i> ready&mdash;as well as how
+      scornfully little you then were!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind what I then was&mdash;the question&rsquo;s of what I actually am,
+      since I close with you on it The picture&rsquo;s therefore as safe as you
+      please,&rdquo; Lord Theign pursued, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;ll do what you just now engaged to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I engaged to do nothing,&rdquo; she replied after a pause; and the face she
+      turned to him had grown suddenly tragic. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no word to take back, for
+      none passed between us; but I <i>won&rsquo;t</i> do what I mentioned and what
+      you at once laughed at Because,&rdquo; she finished, &ldquo;the case is different.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Different?&rdquo; he almost shouted&mdash;&ldquo;<i>how</i>, different?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She didn&rsquo;t look at him for it, but she was none the less strongly distinct
+      &ldquo;He has <i>been</i> here&mdash;and that has done it He knows,&rdquo; she
+      admirably emphasised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Knows what I think of him, no doubt&mdash;for a brazen young
+      prevaricator! But what else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She still kept her eyes on a far-off point. &ldquo;What he will have seen&mdash;that
+      I feel we&rsquo;re too good friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then your denial of it&rsquo;s false,&rdquo; her father fairly thundered&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      you <i>are</i> infatuated?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her the more quiet. &ldquo;I like him very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that your row about the picture,&rdquo; he demanded with passion, &ldquo;has been
+      all a blind?&rdquo; And then as her quietness still held her: &ldquo;And his a blind
+      as much&mdash;to help him to get <i>at</i> you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him again now. &ldquo;He must speak for himself. I&rsquo;ve said what I
+      mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what the devil <i>do</i> you mean?&rdquo; Lord Theign, taking in the hour,
+      had reached the door as in supremely baffled conclusion and with a sense
+      of time lamentably lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met upon it all dreadfully across the wide space, and, hurried
+      and incommoded as she saw him, she yet made him still stand a minute. Then
+      she let everything go. &ldquo;Do what you like with the picture!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He jerked up his arm and guarding hand as before a levelled blow at his
+      face, and with the other hand flung open the door, having done with her
+      now and immediately lost to sight. Left alone she stood a moment looking
+      before her; then with a vague advance, held apparently by a quickly
+      growing sense of the implication of her act, reached a table where she
+      remained a little, deep afresh in thought&mdash;only the next thing to
+      fall into a chair close to it and there, with her elbows on it, yield to
+      the impulse of covering her flushed face with her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK THIRD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      HUGH CRIMBLE waited again in the Bruton Street drawing-room&mdash;this
+      time at the afternoon hour; he restlessly shifted his place, looked at
+      things about him without seeing them; all he saw, all he outwardly
+      studied, was his own face and figure as he stopped an instant before a
+      long glass suspended between two windows. Just as he turned from that
+      brief and perhaps not wholly gratified inspection Lady Grace&mdash;that he
+      had sent up his name to whom was immediately apparent&mdash;presented
+      herself at the entrance from the other room. These young persons had
+      hereupon no instant exchange of words; their exchange was mute&mdash;they
+      but paused where they were; while the silence of each evidently tested the
+      other for full confidence. A measure of this comfort came first, it would
+      have appeared, to Hugh; though he then at once asked for confirmation of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I right, Lady Grace, am I right?&mdash;to have <i>come</i>, I mean,
+      after so many days of not hearing, not knowing, and perhaps, all too
+      stupidly, not trying.&rdquo; And he went on as, still with her eyes on him, she
+      didn&rsquo;t speak; though, only, we should have guessed, from her stress of
+      emotion. &ldquo;Even if I&rsquo;m wrong, let me tell you, I don&rsquo;t care&mdash;simply
+      because, whatever new difficulty I may have brought about for you here a
+      fortnight ago, there&rsquo;s something that to-day adds to my doubt and my fear
+      too great a pang, and that has made me feel I can scarce bear the suspense
+      of them as they are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl came nearer, and if her grave face expressed a pity it yet
+      declined a dread. &ldquo;Of what suspense do you speak? Your still being without
+      the other opinion&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that worries me, yes; and all the more, at this hour, as I say, that&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He dropped it, however: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you in a moment! My <i>real</i>
+      torment, all the while, has been not to know, from day to day, what
+      situation, what complication that last scene of ours with your father here
+      has let you in for; and yet at the same time&mdash;having no sign nor
+      sound from you!&mdash;to see the importance of not making anything
+      possibly worse by approaching you again, however discreetly. I&rsquo;ve been in
+      the dark,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;and feeling that I must leave <i>you</i> there; so
+      that now&mdash;just brutally turning up once more under personal need and
+      at any cost&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know whether I most want or most fear what I may
+      learn from you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, listening and watching, appeared to choose between different
+      ways of meeting this appeal; she had a pacifying, postponing gesture,
+      marked with a beautiful authority, a sign of the value for her of what she
+      gave precedence to and which waved off everything else. &ldquo;Have you had&mdash;first
+      of all&mdash;any news yet of Bardi?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That I have is what has driven me straight <i>at</i> you again&mdash;since
+      I&rsquo;ve shown you before how I turn to you at a crisis. He has come as I
+      hoped and like a regular good &lsquo;un,&rdquo; Hugh was able to state; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just met
+      him at the station, but I pick him up again, at his hotel in Clifford
+      Street, at five. He stopped, on his way from Dover this morning, to my
+      extreme exasperation, to &lsquo;sample&rsquo; Canterbury, and I leave him to a bath
+      and a change and tea. Then swooping down I whirl him round to Bond Street,
+      where his very first apprehension of the thing (an apprehension, oh I
+      guarantee you, so quick and clean and fine and wise) will be the
+      flash-light projected&mdash;well,&rdquo; said the young man, to wind up
+      handsomely, but briefly and reasonably, &ldquo;over the whole field of our
+      question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She panted with comprehension. &ldquo;That of the two portraits being but the
+      one sitter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That of the two portraits being but the one sitter. With everything so to
+      the good, more and more, that bangs in, up to the head, the golden nail of
+      authenticity, and&rdquo;&mdash;he quite glowed through his gloom for it&mdash;&ldquo;we
+      take our stand in glory on the last Mantovano in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a presumption his friend visibly yearned for&mdash;but over which,
+      too, with her eyes away from him, she still distinguished the shadow of a
+      cloud. &ldquo;That is if the flash-light comes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is if it comes indeed, confound it!&rdquo;&mdash;he had to enlarge a
+      little under the recall of past experience. &ldquo;So now, at any rate, you see
+      my tension!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him again as with a vision too full for a waste of words.
+      &ldquo;While you on your side of course keep well in view Mr. Bender&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, while I keep well in view Mr. Bender&rsquo;s; though he doesn&rsquo;t know, you
+      see, of Bardi&rsquo;s being at hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still,&rdquo; said the girl, always all lucid for the case, &ldquo;if the
+      &lsquo;flash-light&rsquo; does presently break&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will first take him in the eye?&rdquo; Hugh had jumped to her idea, but he
+      adopted it only to provide: &ldquo;It might if he didn&rsquo;t now wear goggles, so to
+      say!&mdash;clapped on him too hard by Pappendick&rsquo;s so damnably perverse
+      opinion.&rdquo; With which, however, he quickly bethought himself. &ldquo;Ah, of
+      course, these wretched days, you haven&rsquo;t known of Pappendick&rsquo;s personal
+      visit. After that wire from Verona I wired him back defiance&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that brought him?&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do the honest thing, yes&mdash;I <i>will</i> say for him: to renew,
+      for full assurance, his early memory of our picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She hung upon it. &ldquo;But only to stick then to what he had telegraphed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To declare that for <i>him</i>, lackaday! our thing&rsquo;s a pure Moretto&mdash;and
+      to declare as much, moreover, with all the weight of his authority, to
+      Bender himself, who of course made a point of seeing him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that Bender&rdquo;&mdash;she followed and wondered&mdash;&ldquo;is, as a
+      consequence, wholly off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It made her friend&rsquo;s humour play up in his acute-ness. &ldquo;Bender, Lady
+      Grace, is, by the law of his being, never &lsquo;wholly&rsquo; off&mdash;or on!&mdash;anything.
+      He lives, like the moon, in mid-air, shedding his silver light on earth;
+      never quite gone, yet never <i>all</i> there&mdash;save for inappreciable
+      moments. He <i>would</i> be in eclipse as a peril, I grant,&rdquo; Hugh went on&mdash;&ldquo;if
+      the question had struck him as really closed. But luckily the blessed
+      Press&mdash;which is a pure heavenly joy and now quite immense on it&mdash;keeps
+      it open as wide as Piccadilly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which makes, however,&rdquo; Lady Grace discriminated, &ldquo;for the danger of a
+      grab.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but all the more for the shame of a surrender! Of course I admit that
+      when it&rsquo;s a question of a life spent, like his, in waiting, acquisitively,
+      for the cat to jump, the only thing for one, at a given moment, as against
+      that signal, is to be found one&rsquo;s self by the animal in the line of its
+      trajectory. That&rsquo;s exactly,&rdquo; he laughed, &ldquo;where we are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast about as intelligently to note the place. &ldquo;Your great idea, you
+      mean, <i>has</i> so worked&mdash;with the uproar truly as loud as it has
+      seemed to come to us here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All beyond my wildest hope,&rdquo; Hugh returned; &ldquo;since the sight of the
+      picture, flocked to every day by thousands, so beautifully <i>tells</i>.
+      That we must at any cost keep it, that the nation must, and hang on to it
+      tight, is the cry that fills the air&mdash;to the tune of ten letters a
+      day in the Papers, with every three days a gorgeous leader; to say nothing
+      of more and more passionate talk all over the place, some of it awfully
+      wild, but all of it wind in our sails.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it was that wind then that blew me round there to see the thing
+      in its new light,&rdquo; Lady Grace said. &ldquo;But I couldn&rsquo;t stay&mdash;for tears!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Hugh insisted on his side for comfort, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll crow loudest yet! And
+      don&rsquo;t meanwhile, just <i>don&rsquo;t</i>, those splendid strange eyes of the
+      fellow seem consciously to plead? The women, bless them, adore him, cling
+      to him, and there&rsquo;s talk of a &lsquo;Ladies&rsquo; League of Protest&rsquo;&mdash;all of
+      which keeps up the pitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Amy and I are a ladies&rsquo; league,&rdquo; the girl joylessly joked&mdash;&ldquo;as
+      we now take in the &lsquo;Journal&rsquo; regardless of expense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh then you practically <i>have</i> it all&mdash;since,&rdquo; Hugh, added
+      after a brief hesitation, &ldquo;I suppose Lord Theign himself doesn&rsquo;t languish
+      uninformed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At far-off Salsomaggiore&mdash;by the papers? No doubt indeed he isn&rsquo;t
+      spared even the worst,&rdquo; said Lady Grace&mdash;&ldquo;and no doubt too it&rsquo;s a
+      drag on his cure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion seemed struck with her lack of assurance. &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t&mdash;if
+      I may ask&mdash;hear from him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? Never a word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t write?&rdquo; Hugh allowed himself to insist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t write. And I don&rsquo;t write either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Lady Sandgate?&rdquo; Hugh once more ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t <i>she</i> write?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t <i>she</i> hear?&rdquo; said the young man, treating the other form of
+      the question as a shade evasive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve asked her not to tell me,&rdquo; his friend replied&mdash;&ldquo;that is if he
+      simply holds out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that as she doesn&rsquo;t tell you&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was clear for the inference&mdash;&ldquo;he
+      of course does hold out.&rdquo; To which he added almost accusingly while his
+      eyes searched her: &ldquo;But your case is really bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She confessed to it after a moment, but as if vaguely enjoying it. &ldquo;My
+      case is really bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had a vividness of impatience and contrition. 197
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it&rsquo;s I who&mdash;all too blunderingly!&mdash;have made it so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made it so myself,&rdquo; she said with a high head-shake, &ldquo;and you, on
+      the contrary&mdash;!&rdquo; But here she checked her emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I&rsquo;ve so <i>wanted</i>, through our horrid silence, to help you!&rdquo; And
+      he pressed to get more at the truth. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve so quite fatally displeased
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the last point&mdash;as I tell you. But it&rsquo;s not to that I refer,&rdquo; she
+      explained; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s to the ground of complaint I&rsquo;ve given <i>you</i>.&rdquo; And
+      then as this but left him blank, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s time&mdash;it was at once time&mdash;that
+      you should know,&rdquo; she pursued; &ldquo;and yet if it&rsquo;s hard for me to speak, as
+      you see, it was impossible for me to write. But there it is.&rdquo; She made her
+      sad and beautiful effort. &ldquo;The last thing before he left us I let the
+      picture go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean&mdash;?&rdquo; But he could only wonder&mdash;till, however, it
+      glimmered upon him. &ldquo;You gave up your protest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave up my protest. I told him that&mdash;so far as I&rsquo;m concerned!&mdash;he
+      might do as he liked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her poor friend turned pale at the sharp little shock of it; but if his
+      face thus showed the pang of too great a surprise he yet wreathed the
+      convulsion in a gay grimace. &ldquo;You leave me to struggle alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I leave you to struggle alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it in bewilderingly, but tried again, even to the heroic, for
+      optimism. &ldquo;Ah well, you decided, I suppose, on some new personal ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; a reason came up, a reason I hadn&rsquo;t to that extent looked for and
+      which of a sudden&mdash;quickly, before he went&mdash;I <i>had</i> somehow
+      to deal with. So to give him my word in the dismal sense I mention was my
+      only way to meet the strain.&rdquo; She paused; Hugh waited for something
+      further, and &ldquo;I gave him my word I wouldn&rsquo;t help you,&rdquo; she wound up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned it over. &ldquo;To <i>act</i> in the matter&mdash;I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To act in the matter&rdquo;&mdash;she went through with it&mdash;&ldquo;after the
+      high stand I had taken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still he studied it. &ldquo;I see&mdash;I see. It&rsquo;s between you and your
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s between him and me&mdash;yes. An engagement not again to trouble
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh, from his face, might have feared a still greater complication; so he
+      made, as he would probably have said, a jolly lot of this. &ldquo;Ah, that was
+      nice of you. And natural. <i>That&rsquo;s</i> all right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&rdquo;&mdash;she spoke from a deeper depth&mdash;&ldquo;it&rsquo;s altogether wrong. For
+      whatever happens I must now accept it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, say you must&rdquo;&mdash;he really declined not to treat it almost as
+      rather a &ldquo;lark&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;if we can at least go on talking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we <i>can</i> at least go on talking!&rdquo; she perversely sighed. &ldquo;I can
+      say anything I like so long as I don&rsquo;t say it to <i>him</i>&rdquo; she almost
+      wailed. But she added with more firmness: &ldquo;I can still hope&mdash;and I
+      can still pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He set free again with a joyous gesture all his confidence. &ldquo;Well, what
+      more <i>could</i> you do, anyhow? So isn&rsquo;t that enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her a moment to say, and even then she didn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;Is it enough for
+      <i>you</i>, Mr. Crimble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What <i>is</i> enough for me&rdquo;&mdash;he could for his part readily name it&mdash;&ldquo;is
+      the harm done you at our last meeting by my irruption; so that if you got
+      his consent to see me&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t get his consent!&rdquo;&mdash;she had turned away from the searching
+      eyes, but she faced them again to rectify: &ldquo;I see you against his express
+      command.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah then thank God I came!&rdquo;&mdash;it was like a bland breath on a <i>feu
+      de joie</i>: he flamed so much higher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God you&rsquo;ve come, yes&mdash;for my deplorable exposure.&rdquo; And to
+      justify her name for it before he could protest, &ldquo;I <i>offered</i> him
+      here not to see you,&rdquo; she rigorously explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Offered him?&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh did drop for it. &ldquo;Not to see me&mdash;ever
+      again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She didn&rsquo;t falter. &ldquo;Never again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah then he understood. &ldquo;But he wouldn&rsquo;t let that serve&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for the price I put on it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His yielding on the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His yielding on the picture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh lingered before it all. &ldquo;Your proposal wasn&rsquo;t &lsquo;good enough&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t good enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he repeated&mdash;&ldquo;I see.&rdquo; But he was in that light again
+      mystified. &ldquo;Then why are you therefore not free?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because&mdash;just after&mdash;you came back, and I <i>did</i> see you
+      again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, it was all present. &ldquo;You found you were too sorry for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found I was too sorry for you&mdash;as he himself found I was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had got hold of it now. &ldquo;And <i>that</i>, you mean, he couldn&rsquo;t
+      stomach?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So little that when you had gone (and <i>how</i> you had to go you
+      remember) he at once proposed, rather than that I should deceive you in a
+      way so different from his own&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do all we want of him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To do all I did at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it was <i>then</i>,&rdquo; he took in, &ldquo;that you wouldn&rsquo;t deal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;try though she might to keep the colour out, it all came
+      straighter and straighter now&mdash;&ldquo;those moments had brought you home to
+      me as they had also brought <i>him</i>; making such a difference, I felt,
+      for what he veered round to agree to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difference&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh wanted it so adorably definite&mdash;&ldquo;that you
+      didn&rsquo;t see your way to accepting&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not to accepting the condition he named.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which was that he&rsquo;d keep the picture for you if you&rsquo;d treat me as too
+      &lsquo;low&rsquo;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I&rsquo;d treat you,&rdquo; said Lady Grace with her eyes on his fine young face,
+      &ldquo;as impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept her eyes&mdash;he clearly liked so to make her repeat it. &ldquo;And not
+      even for the sake of the picture&mdash;?&rdquo; After he had given her time,
+      however, her silence, with her beautiful look in it, seemed to admonish
+      him not to force her for his pleasure; as if what she had already told him
+      didn&rsquo;t make him throb enough for the wonder of it. He <i>had</i> it, and
+      let her see by his high flush how he made it his own&mdash;while, the next
+      thing, as it was but part of her avowal, the rest of that illumination
+      called for a different intelligence. &ldquo;Your father&rsquo;s reprobation of me
+      personally is on the ground that you&rsquo;re all such great people?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She spared him the invidious answer to this as, a moment before, his
+      eagerness had spared her reserve; she flung over the &ldquo;ground&rdquo; that his
+      question laid bare the light veil of an evasion, &ldquo;&lsquo;Great people,&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve
+      learned to see, mustn&rsquo;t&mdash;to remain great&mdash;do what my father&rsquo;s
+      doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s indeed on the theory of their not so behaving,&rdquo; Hugh returned, &ldquo;that
+      we see them&mdash;all the inferior rest of us&mdash;in the grand glamour
+      of their greatness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If he had spoken to meet her admirable frankness half-way, that beauty in
+      her almost brushed him aside to make at a single step the rest of the
+      journey. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t see them in it for long&mdash;if they don&rsquo;t now, under
+      such tests and with such opportunities, begin to take care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This had given him, at a stroke, he clearly felt, all freedom for the
+      closer criticism. &ldquo;Lord Theign perhaps recognises some such canny truth,
+      but &lsquo;takes care,&rsquo; with the least trouble to himself and the finest short
+      cut&mdash;does it, if you&rsquo;ll let me say so, rather on the cheap&mdash;by
+      finding &lsquo;the likes&rsquo; of me, as his daughter&rsquo;s trusted friend, out of the
+      question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you won&rsquo;t mind that, will you?&rdquo; Lady Grace asked, &ldquo;if he finds his
+      daughter herself, in any such relation to you, quite as much so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Different enough, from position to position and person to person,&rdquo; he
+      brightly brooded, &ldquo;is the view that gets itself <i>most</i> comfortably
+      taken of the implications of Honour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the girl returned; &ldquo;my father, in the act of despoiling us all, all
+      who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant consciousness,
+      keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine, so delicate sense,
+      by suddenly discovering that he&rsquo;s scandalised at my caring for your
+      friendship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession
+      promised and only waiting&mdash;or as if from that moment forth he had her
+      assurance of everything that most concerned him and that might most
+      inspire. &ldquo;Well, isn&rsquo;t the moral of it all simply that what his perversity
+      of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us is to bring
+      us&mdash;and to keep us&mdash;blessedly together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seemed for a moment to question his &ldquo;simply.&rdquo; &ldquo;Do you regard us as so
+      much &lsquo;together&rsquo; when you remember where, in spite of everything, I&rsquo;ve put
+      myself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By telling him to do what he likes?&rdquo; he recalled without embarrassment.
+      &ldquo;Oh, that wasn&rsquo;t in spite of &lsquo;everything&rsquo;&mdash;it was only in spite of
+      the Manto-vano.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Only&rsquo;?&rdquo; she flushed&mdash;&ldquo;when I&rsquo;ve given the picture up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; Hugh cried, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care a hang for the picture!&rdquo; And then as she
+      let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands: &ldquo;We
+      both only care, don&rsquo;t we, that we&rsquo;re given to each other thus? We both
+      only care, don&rsquo;t we, that nothing can keep us apart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you&rsquo;ve forgiven me&mdash;!&rdquo; she sighed into his fond face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, since you gave the thing up <i>for</i> me,&rdquo; he pleadingly laughed,
+      &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t as if you had given <i>me</i> up&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For anything, anything? Ah never, never!&rdquo; she breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why aren&rsquo;t we all right?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you will&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh for ever and ever and ever!&rdquo;&mdash;and with this ardent cry of his
+      devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his
+      breast and to his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning &ldquo;Amy
+      Sandgate!&rdquo;&mdash;as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room.
+      Lady Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them&mdash;their
+      disjunction had scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer
+      threshold. They had at once put the widest space possible between them&mdash;a
+      little of the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch
+      at composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one
+      side and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a
+      few moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of;
+      from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt and
+      responsible address to Hugh. &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t you go without more delay to
+      Clifford Street?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He came back to it all alert &ldquo;At once!&rdquo; He had recovered his hat and
+      reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder lady.
+      &ldquo;Please pardon me&rdquo;&mdash;and he disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the
+      girl. &ldquo;Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father&rsquo;s suddenly
+      at hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has come back?&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Grace was sharply struck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to Kitty&mdash;according
+      to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back late from my luncheon. He
+      has returned with a rush&mdash;as,&rdquo; said his correspondent in the elation
+      of triumph, &ldquo;I was <i>sure</i> he would!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her young friend was more at sea. &ldquo;Brought back, you mean, by the outcry&mdash;even
+      though he so hates it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was more and more all lucidity&mdash;save in so far as she was now
+      almost all authority. &ldquo;Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come
+      back to face the music!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which the
+      music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to a
+      positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      dear old father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject? &ldquo;At
+      the point the row has reached he couldn&rsquo;t stand it another day; so he has
+      thrown up his cure and&mdash;lest we should oppose him!&mdash;not even
+      announced his start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; her companion returned, &ldquo;now that I&rsquo;ve <i>done</i> it all I shall
+      never oppose him again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she
+      might have received on entering. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll only oppose <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he does,&rdquo; said Lady Grace, &ldquo;we&rsquo;re at present two to bear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heaven save us then&rdquo;&mdash;the elder woman was quick, was even cordial,
+      for the sense of this&mdash;&ldquo;your good friend <i>is</i> clever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace honoured the remark. &ldquo;Mr. Crim-ble&rsquo;s remarkably clever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&rsquo;ve arranged&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We haven&rsquo;t arranged&mdash;but we&rsquo;ve understood. So that, dear Amy, if <i>you</i>
+      understand&mdash;!&rdquo; Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the
+      hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His lordship has arrived?&rdquo; his mistress immediately put to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my lady, but Lord John has&mdash;to know if he&rsquo;s expected <i>here</i>,
+      and in that case, by your ladyship&rsquo;s leave, to come up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her ladyship turned to the girl. &ldquo;May Lord John&mdash;as we do await your
+      father&mdash;come up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As suits <i>you</i>, please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may come up,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. &ldquo;His lordship&rsquo;s expected.&rdquo;
+       She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went on to her
+      companion: &ldquo;You asked me just now if I understood. Well&mdash;I do
+      understand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Grace, with Gotch&rsquo;s withdrawal, which left the door open, had reached
+      the passage to the other room. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll excuse me!&rdquo;&mdash;she made her
+      escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter and quite
+      waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of his eagerness and
+      tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. &ldquo;What on earth then do
+      you suppose he has come back to <i>do</i>&mdash;?&rdquo; To which he added while
+      his hostess&rsquo;s gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture: &ldquo;Because when a
+      fellow really finds himself the centre of a cyclone&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it just at the centre,&rdquo; she interrupted, &ldquo;that you keep remarkably
+      still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I count on dear
+      Theign&rsquo;s doing nothing in the least foolish&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but he can&rsquo;t have chucked everything for nothing,&rdquo; Lord John sharply
+      returned; &ldquo;and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can&rsquo;t not meet
+      somehow, hang it, such an assault on his character as a great nobleman and
+      good citizen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the
+      scapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!&rdquo; Lady
+      Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Lord John concluded for her, &ldquo;the mercenary millions on whose
+      traffic in their trumpery values&mdash;when they&rsquo;re so lucky as to have
+      any!&mdash;<i>this</i> isn&rsquo;t a patch!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there are cases <i>and</i> cases: situations and responsibilities so
+      intensely differ!&rdquo;&mdash;that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the
+      moral to be gathered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course everything differs, all round, from everything,&rdquo; Lord John went
+      on; &ldquo;and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the victim of
+      circumstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest motives, to be
+      literally torn to pieces?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshly
+      consulted her bracelet watch, &ldquo;I hope he isn&rsquo;t already torn&mdash;if you
+      tell me you&rsquo;ve been to Kitty&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again,&rdquo; the
+      young man explained, &ldquo;as Lady Imber hadn&rsquo;t been at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah cool Kitty!&rdquo; his hostess sighed again&mdash;but diverted, as she
+      spoke, by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding
+      Lord Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb of
+      travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearning tenderness
+      and compassionate curiosity. &ldquo;At last, dearest friend&mdash;what a joy!
+      But with Kitty not at home to receive you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That young woman&rsquo;s parent made light of it for the indulged creature&rsquo;s
+      sake. &ldquo;Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty.&rdquo; To
+      which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord John:
+      &ldquo;But Bender, who came there before my arrival&mdash;he hasn&rsquo;t tried for me
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive. &ldquo;I
+      met him at the club at luncheon; he had had your letter&mdash;but for
+      which chance, my dear man, I should have known nothing. You&rsquo;ll see him all
+      right at this house; but I&rsquo;m glad, if I may say so, Theign,&rdquo; the speaker
+      pursued with some emphasis&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad, you know, to get hold of you
+      first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign seemed about to ask for the meaning of this remark, but his
+      other companion&rsquo;s apprehension had already overflowed. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t come
+      back, have you&mdash;to whatever it may be!&mdash;for <i>trouble</i> of
+      any sort with Breckenridge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship transferred his penetration to this fair friend, &ldquo;Have you
+      become so intensely absorbed&mdash;these remarkable days!&mdash;in
+      &lsquo;Breckenridge&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the shadow, you would have seen, of his claimed right, or at
+      least privilege, of search&mdash;yet easily, after an instant, emerged
+      clear. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thought and dreamt but of <i>you</i>&mdash;suspicious man!&mdash;in
+      proportion as the clamour has spread; and Mr. Bender meanwhile, if you
+      want to know, hasn&rsquo;t been near me once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John came in a manner, and however unconsciously, to her aid. &ldquo;You&rsquo;d
+      have seen, if he had been, what&rsquo;s the matter with him, I think&mdash;and
+      what perhaps Theign has seen from his own letter: since,&rdquo; he went on to
+      his fellow-visitor, &ldquo;I understood him a week ago to have been much taken
+      up with writing you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;s letter,&rdquo; he then vouchsafed
+      to Lord John&mdash;&ldquo;three extraordinarily vulgar pages about the egregious
+      Pap-pendick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About his having suddenly turned up in person, yes, and, as Breckenridge
+      says, marked the picture down?&rdquo;&mdash;the young man was clearly
+      all-knowing. &ldquo;That <i>has</i> of course weighed on Bender&mdash;being
+      confirmed apparently, on the whole, by the drift of public opinion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign took, on this, with a frank show of reaction from some of his
+      friend&rsquo;s terms, a sharp turn off; he even ironically indicated the babbler
+      or at least the blunderer in question to Lady Sandgate. &ldquo;He too has known
+      me so long, and he comes here to talk to me of &lsquo;the drift of public
+      opinion&rsquo;!&rdquo; After which he quite charged at his vain informant. &ldquo;Am I to
+      tell you again that I snap my fingers at the drift of public opinion?&mdash;which
+      is but another name for the chatter of all the fools one doesn&rsquo;t know, in
+      addition to all those (and plenty of &lsquo;em!) one damnably does.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, by a turn of the hand, dropped oil from her golden cruse.
+      &ldquo;Ah, you did <i>that</i>, in your own grand way, before you went abroad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t speak of the matter, my dear man, in the light of its effect on
+      <i>you</i>,&rdquo; Lord John importantly explained&mdash;&ldquo;but in the light of
+      its effect on Bender; who so consumedly wants the picture, if he <i>is</i>
+      to have it, to be a Mantovano, but seems unable to get it taken at last
+      for anything but the fine old Moretto that of course it has always been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, in growing disgust at the whole beastly complication,
+      betrayed more and more the odd pitch of the temper that had abruptly
+      restored him with such incalculable weight to the scene of action. &ldquo;Well,
+      isn&rsquo;t a fine old Moretto good enough for him; confound him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It pulled up not a little Lord John, who yet made his point. &ldquo;A fine old
+      Moretto, you know, was exactly what he declined at Dedborough&mdash;for
+      its comparative, strictly comparative, insignificance; and he only thought
+      of the picture when the wind began to rise for the enormous rarity&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That that mendacious young cad who has bamboozled Grace,&rdquo; Lord Theign
+      broke in, &ldquo;tried to befool us, for his beggarly reasons, into claiming for
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate renewed her mild influence. &ldquo;Ah, the knowing people haven&rsquo;t
+      had their last word&mdash;the possible Mantovano isn&rsquo;t exploded <i>yet!</i>&rdquo;
+       Her noble friend, however, declined the offered spell. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had enough of
+      the knowing people&mdash;the knowing people are serpents! My picture&rsquo;s to
+      take or to leave&mdash;and it&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve come back, if you please, John,
+      to say to your man to his face.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This declaration had a report as sharp and almost as multiplied as the
+      successive cracks of a discharged revolver; yet when the light smoke
+      cleared Lady Sand-gate at least was still left standing and smiling. &ldquo;Yes,
+      why in mercy&rsquo;s name can&rsquo;t he choose <i>which?</i>&mdash;and why does he
+      write him, dreadful Breckenridge, such tiresome argumentative letters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took up her idea as with the air of something that had been
+      working in him rather vehemently, though under due caution too, as a
+      consequence of this exchange, during which he had apprehensively watched
+      his elder. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I quite see <i>how</i>, my dear Theign, the poor
+      chap&rsquo;s letter was so offensive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that case his dear Theign could tell him. &ldquo;Because it was a tissue of
+      expressions that may pass current&mdash;over counters and in awful
+      newspapers&mdash;in <i>his</i> extraordinary world or country, but that I
+      decline to take time to puzzle out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he didn&rsquo;t make himself understood,&rdquo; Lord John took leave to laugh, &ldquo;it
+      must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his turns,
+      haven&rsquo;t a notion,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety, &ldquo;of what
+      he&rsquo;s talking about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I never miss his weird sense,&rdquo; her younger guest again loyally
+      contended&mdash;&ldquo;and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I happen to like nothing that I don&rsquo;t enjoy,&rdquo; Lord Theign rejoined with
+      some asperity&mdash;&ldquo;and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my
+      part an interest in his expenditure of purchase-money that I neither feel
+      nor pretend to. He doesn&rsquo;t want&mdash;by what I spell out&mdash;the
+      picture he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want&mdash;if one reads
+      it so&mdash;the picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to
+      make, with great emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two
+      &lsquo;articles&rsquo; (the greatest of Morettos an &lsquo;article&rsquo;!) haven&rsquo;t been &lsquo;by now&rsquo; 
+      proved different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would so prove
+      them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John indulged in a pause&mdash;but also in a suggestion. &ldquo;He must
+      allude to your hoping&mdash;when you allowed us to place the picture with
+      Mackintosh&mdash;that it would show to all London in the most precious
+      light conceivable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if it hasn&rsquo;t so shown&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign stared as if mystified&mdash;&ldquo;what
+      in the world&rsquo;s the meaning of this preposterous racket?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The racket is largely,&rdquo; his young friend explained, &ldquo;the vociferation of
+      the people who contradict each other about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On which their hostess sought to enliven the gravity of the question.
+      &ldquo;Some&mdash;yes&mdash;shouting on the housetops that&rsquo;s a Mantovano of the
+      Mantovanos, and others shrieking back at them that they&rsquo;re donkeys if not
+      criminals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may take it for whatever he likes,&rdquo; said Lord Theign, heedless of
+      these contributions, &ldquo;he may father it on Michael Angelo himself if he&rsquo;ll
+      but clear out with it and let me alone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What he&rsquo;d <i>like</i> to take it for,&rdquo; Lord John at this point saw his
+      way to remark, &ldquo;is something in the nature of a Hundred Thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Hundred Thousand?&rdquo; cried his astonished friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite, I dare say, a Hundred Thousand&rdquo;&mdash;the young man enjoyed
+      clearly handling even by the lips so round a sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate disclaimed however with agility any appearance of having
+      gaped. &ldquo;Why, haven&rsquo;t you yet realised, Theign, that those are the American
+      figures?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship looked at her fixedly and then did the same by Lord John,
+      after which he waited a little. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to do with the American
+      figures&mdash;which seem to me, if you press me, you know, quite
+      intolerably vulgar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;d be as vulgar as anybody for a Hundred Thousand!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate
+      hastened to proclaim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t he let us know at Dedborough,&rdquo; Lord John asked of the master of
+      that seat, &ldquo;that he had no use, as he said, for lower values?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard him remark myself,&rdquo; said their companion, rising to the
+      monstrous memory, &ldquo;that he wouldn&rsquo;t take a cheap picture&mdash;even though
+      a &lsquo;handsome&rsquo; one&mdash;as a present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does he call the thing round the corner a cheap picture?&rdquo; the
+      proprietor of the work demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John threw up his arms with a grin of impatience. &ldquo;All he wants to
+      do, don&rsquo;t you see? is to prevent your <i>making</i> it one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign glared at this imputation to him of a low ductility. &ldquo;I
+      offered the thing, as it was, at an estimate worthy of it&mdash;and of <i>me</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear reckless friend,&rdquo; his young adviser protested, &ldquo;you named no
+      figure <i>at all</i> when it came to the point&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It <i>didn&rsquo;t</i> come to the point! Nothing came to the point but that I
+      put a Moretto on view; as a thing, yes, perfectly&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign
+      accepted the reminding gesture&mdash;&ldquo;on which a rich American had an eye
+      and in which he had, so to speak, an interest. That was what I wanted, and
+      so we left it&mdash;parting each of us ready but neither of us bound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Bender&rsquo;s bound, as he&rsquo;d say,&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate interposed&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;bound&rsquo; 
+      to make you swallow the enormous luscious plum that your appetite so
+      morbidly rejects!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My appetite, as morbid as you like&rdquo;&mdash;her old friend had shrewdly
+      turned on her&mdash;&ldquo;is my own affair, and if the fellow must deal in
+      enormities I warn him to carry them elsewhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, plainly, by this time, was quite exasperated at the absurdity
+      of him. &ldquo;But how can&rsquo;t you see that it&rsquo;s only a plum, as she says, for a
+      plum and an eye for an eye&mdash;since the picture itself, with this huge
+      ventilation, is now quite a different affair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How the deuce a different affair when just what the man himself confesses
+      is that, in spite of all the chatter of the prigs and pedants, there&rsquo;s no
+      really established ground for treating it as anything but the same?&rdquo; On
+      which, as having so unanswerably spoken, Lord Theign shook himself free
+      again, in his high petulance, and moved restlessly to where the passage to
+      the other room appeared to offer his nerves an issue; all moreover to the
+      effect of suggesting to us that something still other than what he had
+      said might meanwhile work in him behind and beneath that quantity. The
+      spectators of his trouble watched him, for the time, in uncertainty and
+      with a mute but associated comment on the perversity and oddity he had so
+      suddenly developed; Lord John giving a shrug of almost bored despair and
+      Lady Sandgate signalling caution and tact for their action by a finger
+      flourished to her lips, and in fact at once proceeding to apply these
+      arts. The subject of her attention had still remained as in worried
+      thought; he had even mechanically taken up a book from a table&mdash;which
+      he then, after an absent glance at it, tossed down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re so detached from reality, you adorable dreamer,&rdquo; she began&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      unless you stick to <i>that</i> you might as well have done nothing. What
+      you call the pedantry and priggishness and all the rest of it is exactly
+      what poor Breckenridge asked almost on his knees, wonderful man, to be <i>allowed</i>
+      to pay you for; since even if the meddlers and chatterers haven&rsquo;t settled
+      anything for those who know&mdash;though which of the elect themselves
+      after all <i>does</i> seem to know?&mdash;it&rsquo;s a great service rendered
+      him to have started such a hare to run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John took freedom to throw off very much the same idea. &ldquo;Certainly
+      his connection with the whole question and agitation makes no end for his
+      glory.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It didn&rsquo;t, that remark, bring their friend back to him, but it at least
+      made his indifference flash with derision. &ldquo;His &lsquo;glory&rsquo;&mdash;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s
+      glory? Why, they quite universally loathe him&mdash;judging by the stuff
+      they print!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, here&mdash;as a corrupter of our morals and a promoter of our decay,
+      even though so many are flat on their faces to him&mdash;yes! But it&rsquo;s
+      another affair over there where the eagle screams like a thousand
+      steam-whistles and the newspapers flap like the leaves of the forest: <i>there</i>
+      he&rsquo;ll be, if you&rsquo;ll only let him, the biggest thing going; since sound, in
+      that air, seems to mean size, and size to be all that counts. If he said
+      of the thing, as you recognise,&rdquo; Lord John went on, &ldquo;&lsquo;It&rsquo;s going to be a
+      Mantovano,&rsquo; why you can bet your life that it <i>is</i>&mdash;that it has
+      <i>got</i> to be some kind of a one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fellow-guest, at this, drew nearer again, irritated, you would have
+      been sure, by the unconscious infelicity of the pair&mdash;worked up to
+      something quite openly wilful and passionate. &ldquo;No kind of a furious
+      flaunting one, under <i>my</i> patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The
+      Dedborough picture in the market&mdash;owing to horrid little
+      circumstances that regard myself alone&mdash;is the Dedborough picture at
+      a decent, sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else
+      whatever; which I beg you will take as my last word on the subject.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, trying whether he <i>could</i> take it, momentarily mingled his
+      hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless
+      look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only
+      reassert himself. &ldquo;May I nevertheless reply that I think you&rsquo;ll not be
+      able to prevent <i>anything?</i>&mdash;since the discussed object will
+      completely escape your control in New York!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And almost any discussed object&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sand-gate rose to the
+      occasion also&mdash;&ldquo;is in New York, by what one hears, easily <i>worth</i>
+      a Hundred Thousand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. &ldquo;I sell the man a
+      Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent
+      swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;Lord John was but briefly baffled&mdash;&ldquo;when the picture&rsquo;s
+      his you can&rsquo;t help its doing what it can and what it will for him
+      anywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it isn&rsquo;t his yet,&rdquo; the elder man retorted&mdash;&ldquo;and I promise you
+      never will be if he has <i>sent</i> you to me with his big drum!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as if the
+      case were now really beyond them. &ldquo;Yes, how indeed can it ever <i>become</i>
+      his if Theign simply won&rsquo;t let him pay for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her question was unanswerable. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first time in all my life I&rsquo;ve
+      known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening <i>not</i>
+      to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Theign is unable to take it in,&rdquo; her ladyship explained, &ldquo;that&mdash;as
+      I&rsquo;ve heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type&mdash;Bender
+      simply can&rsquo;t <i>afford</i> not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest
+      buyer who ever lived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, cited and celebrated at my <i>expense</i>&mdash;say it at once and
+      have it over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dear man&rsquo;s inimitable&mdash;at his &lsquo;expense&rsquo;!&rdquo; It was more than Lord
+      John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence
+      and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean,&rdquo; Lord Theign asseverated&mdash;&ldquo;at
+      the expense of my modest claim to regulate my behaviour by my own
+      standards. There you perfectly <i>are</i> about the man, and it&rsquo;s
+      precisely what I say&mdash;that he&rsquo;s to hustle and harry me <i>because</i>
+      he&rsquo;s a money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please
+      understand, when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource
+      at Dedborough. I didn&rsquo;t put my property on view that <i>he</i> might blow
+      about it&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, if you like it,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate returned; &ldquo;but you certainly didn&rsquo;t so
+      arrange&rdquo;&mdash;she seemed to think her point somehow would help&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      you might blow about it yourself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody wants to &lsquo;blow,&rsquo;&rdquo; Lord John more stoutly interposed, &ldquo;either hot
+      or cold, I take it; but I really don&rsquo;t see the harm of Bender&rsquo;s liking to
+      be known for the scale of his transactions&mdash;actual or merely imputed
+      even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. &ldquo;The only question
+      perhaps is why he doesn&rsquo;t try for some precious work that somebody&mdash;less
+      delicious than dear Theign&mdash;<i>can</i> be persuaded on bended knees
+      to accept a hundred thousand for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Try&rsquo; for one?&rdquo;&mdash;her younger visitor took it up while her elder more
+      attentively watched him. &ldquo;That was exactly what he did try for when he
+      pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh well, he mustn&rsquo;t come back to <i>that</i>&mdash;must he, Theign?&rdquo; her
+      ladyship cooed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious
+      apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed himself.
+      &ldquo;Besides which there <i>are</i> no things of that magnitude knocking
+      about, don&rsquo;t you know?&mdash;they&rsquo;ve <i>got</i> to be worked up first if
+      they&rsquo;re to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind,&rdquo; he
+      continued to his noble monitor, &ldquo;an agreement on some such basis as <i>this</i>?&mdash;that
+      you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you&rsquo;ll squeamishly
+      consent to take, if it&rsquo;s at the same time the smallest he&rsquo;ll squeamishly
+      consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him free&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion
+      only waited. &ldquo;Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum
+      taken as practically one and the same?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you know,&rdquo; Lord John discriminated, &ldquo;he doesn&rsquo;t &lsquo;talk&rsquo; so much
+      himself&mdash;there&rsquo;s really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender.
+      It&rsquo;s the rate at which&mdash;by the very way he&rsquo;s &lsquo;fixed&rsquo;: an awful way
+      indeed, I grant you!&mdash;a perfect army of reporter-wretches, close at
+      his heels, are always talking for him and of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign spoke hereupon at last with the air as of an impulse that had
+      been slowly gathering force. &ldquo;<i>You</i> talk for him, my dear chap,
+      pretty well. You urge his case, my honour, quite as if you were assured of
+      a commission on the job&mdash;on a fine ascending scale! Has he put you up
+      to that proposition, eh? <i>Do</i> you get a handsome percentage and <i>are</i>
+      you to make a good thing of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man coloured under this stinging pleasantry&mdash;whether from a
+      good conscience affronted or from a bad one made worse; but he otherwise
+      showed a bold front, only bending his eyes a moment on his watch. &ldquo;As he&rsquo;s
+      to come to you himself&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t know why the mischief he doesn&rsquo;t
+      come!&mdash;he will answer you that graceful question.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he answer it,&rdquo; Lord Theign asked, &ldquo;with the veracity that the
+      suggestion you&rsquo;ve just made on his behalf represents him as so beautifully
+      adhering to?&rdquo; On which he again quite fiercely turned his back and
+      recovered his detachment, the others giving way behind him to a blanker
+      dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, in spite of this however, pumped up a tone. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why
+      you should speak as if I were urging some abomination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll tell you why!&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign was upon him again for the
+      purpose. &ldquo;Because I had rather give the cursed thing away outright and for
+      good and all than that it should hang out there another day in the
+      interest of such equivocations!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate&rsquo;s dismay yielded to her wonder, and her wonder apparently in
+      turn to her amusement. &ldquo;&lsquo;Give it away,&rsquo; my dear friend, to a man who only
+      longs to smother you in gold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her dear friend, however, had lost patience with her levity. &ldquo;Give it away&mdash;just
+      for a luxury of protest and a stoppage of chatter&mdash;to some cause as
+      unlike as possible that of Mr. Bender&rsquo;s power of sound and his splendid
+      reputation: to the Public, to the Authorities, to the Thingumbob, to the
+      Nation!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate broke into horror while Lord John stood sombre and
+      stupefied. &ldquo;Ah, my dear creature, you&rsquo;ve flights of extravagance&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing&rsquo;s very certain,&rdquo; Lord Theign quite heedlessly pursued&mdash;&ldquo;that
+      the thought of my property on view there does give intolerably on my
+      nerves, more and more every minute that I&rsquo;m conscious of it; so that, hang
+      it, if one thinks of it, why shouldn&rsquo;t I, for my relief, do again, damme,
+      <i>what I like</i>?&mdash;that is bang the door in their faces, have the
+      show immediately stopped?&rdquo; He turned with the attraction of this idea from
+      one of his listeners to the other. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s <i>my</i> show&mdash;it isn&rsquo;t
+      Bender&rsquo;s, surely!&mdash;and I can do just as I choose with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but isn&rsquo;t that the very point?&rdquo;&mdash;and Lady Sandgate put it to
+      Lord John. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it Bender&rsquo;s show much more than his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her invoked authority, however, in answer to this, made but a motion of
+      disappointment and disgust at so much rank folly&mdash;while Lord Theign,
+      on the other hand, followed up his happy thought. &ldquo;Then if it&rsquo;s Bender&rsquo;s
+      show, or if he claims it is, there&rsquo;s all the more reason!&rdquo; And it took his
+      lordship&rsquo;s inspiration no longer to flower. &ldquo;See here, John&mdash;do this:
+      go right round there this moment, please, and tell them from me to shut
+      straight down!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Shut straight down&rsquo;?&rdquo; the young man abhorrently echoed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop it <i>to-night</i>&mdash;wind it up and end it: see?&rdquo; The more the
+      entertainer of that vision held it there the more charm it clearly took on
+      for him. &ldquo;Have the picture removed from view and the incident closed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You seriously ask <i>that</i> of me!&rdquo; poor Lord John quavered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why in the world shouldn&rsquo;t I? It&rsquo;s a jolly lot less than you asked of me
+      a month ago at Dedborough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then am I to say to them?&rdquo; Lord John spoke but after a long moment,
+      during which he had only looked hard and&mdash;an observer might even then
+      have felt&mdash;ominously at his taskmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That personage replied as if wholly to have done with the matter. &ldquo;Say
+      anything that comes into your clever head. I don&rsquo;t really see that there&rsquo;s
+      anything else <i>for</i> you!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate sighed to the messenger, who
+      gave no sign save of positive stiffness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter seemed still to weigh his displeasing obligation; then he eyed
+      his friend significantly&mdash;almost portentously. &ldquo;Those are absolutely
+      your sentiments?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are absolutely my sentiments&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign brought this
+      out as with the force of a physical push.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then!&rdquo; But the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly
+      sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the
+      extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. &ldquo;Not one more day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign only waved him away. &ldquo;Not one more hour!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused at the door, this reluctant spokesman, as if for some supreme
+      protest; but after another prolonged and decisive engagement with the two
+      pairs of eyes that waited, though differently, on his performance, he
+      clapped on his hat as in the rage of his resentment and departed on his
+      mission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can&rsquo;t bear to do it, poor man!&rdquo; Lady Sand-gate ruefully remarked to
+      her remaining guest after Lord John had, under extreme pressure, dashed
+      out to Bond Street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say not!&rdquo;&mdash;Lord Theign, flushed with the felicity of
+      self-expression, made little of that. &ldquo;But he goes too far, you see, and
+      it clears the air&mdash;pouah! Now therefore&rdquo;&mdash;and he glanced at the
+      clock&mdash;&ldquo;I must go to Kitty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kitty&mdash;with what Kitty wants,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate opined&mdash;&ldquo;won&rsquo;t
+      thank you for <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never thanks me for anything&rdquo;&mdash;and the fact of his resignation
+      clearly added here to his bitterness. &ldquo;So it&rsquo;s no great loss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you at any rate,&rdquo; his hostess asked, &ldquo;wait for Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship cast it to the winds. &ldquo;What have I to do with him now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why surely if he&rsquo;ll accept your own price&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign thought&mdash;he wondered; and then as if fairly amused at
+      himself: &ldquo;Hanged if I know what <i>is</i> my own price!&rdquo; After which he
+      went for his hat. &ldquo;But there&rsquo;s one thing,&rdquo; he remembered as he came back
+      with it: &ldquo;where&rsquo;s my too, <i>too</i> unnatural daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean Grace and really want her I&rsquo;ll send and find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now&rdquo;&mdash;he bethought himself. &ldquo;But does she <i>see</i> that
+      chatterbox?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble? Yes, she sees him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He kept his eyes on her. &ldquo;Then how far has it gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate overcame an embarrassment. &ldquo;Well, not even yet, I think, so
+      far as they&rsquo;d like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;d &lsquo;like&rsquo;&mdash;heaven save the mark!&mdash;to marry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspect them of it. What line, if it should come to that,&rdquo; she asked,
+      &ldquo;would you then take?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was perfectly prompt. &ldquo;The line that for Grace it&rsquo;s simply ignoble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The force of her deprecation of such language was qualified by tact. &ldquo;Ah,
+      darling, as dreadful as <i>that?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He could but view the possibility with dark resentment. &ldquo;It lets us so
+      down&mdash;from what we&rsquo;ve always been and done; so down, down, down that
+      I&rsquo;m amazed you don&rsquo;t feel it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I feel there&rsquo;s still plenty to keep you up!&rdquo; she soothingly laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to consider this vague amount&mdash;which he apparently judged,
+      however, not so vast as to provide for the whole yearning of his nature.
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; he thus more blandly professed, &ldquo;I shall need all the
+      extra <i>agrément</i> that your affection can supply.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If nothing could have been, on this, richer response, nothing could at the
+      same time have bee more pleasing than her modesty. &ldquo;Ah, my affectionate
+      Theign, is, as I think you know, a fountain always in flood; but in any
+      more worldly element than that&mdash;as you&rsquo;ve ever seen for yourself&mdash;a
+      poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not &lsquo;great&rsquo; as they
+      used so finely to call it! You <i>are</i>&mdash;with the natural sense of
+      greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man doing and
+      taking things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for
+      the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. &ldquo;If you mean that I hold up my
+      head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much longer
+      possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the name of
+      goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them, and is it
+      really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her license and a
+      specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I&rsquo;m in danger of
+      helplessly to swallow the dose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you find Mr. Crimble,&rdquo; Lady Sandgate as if there might really be
+      something to say, &ldquo;so utterly out of the question?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree
+      offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one&rsquo;s poor dear
+      decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would
+      forbid <i>that</i> kind of relation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What kind of relation, if any, Hugh&rsquo;s deficiencies might still render
+      thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of
+      Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether assured
+      sound of &ldquo;Mr. Breckenridge Bender.&rdquo; The guest in possession gave a cry of
+      impatience, but Lady Sandgate said &ldquo;Coming up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If his lordship will see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s beyond his time,&rdquo; his lordship pronounced&mdash;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see him
+      now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but <i>mustn&rsquo;t</i> you&mdash;and mayn&rsquo;t <i>I</i> then?&rdquo; She waited,
+      however, for no response to signify to her servant &ldquo;Let him come,&rdquo; and her
+      companion could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he
+      wondered at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a
+      little that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. &ldquo;Does the kind of
+      relation you&rsquo;d be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down,
+      as you say, more than the relation you&rsquo;ve been having with Mr. Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. &ldquo;Do you mean don&rsquo;t
+      I hate &lsquo;em equally both?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cut his further reply short, however, by a &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; of warning&mdash;Mr.
+      Bender was there and his introducer had left them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon little
+      to ceremony. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve but a moment, to my regret, to give you, Mr. Bender,
+      and if you&rsquo;ve been unavoidably detained, as you great bustling people are
+      so apt to be, it will perhaps still be soon enough for your comfort to
+      hear from me that I&rsquo;ve just given order to close our exhibition. From the
+      present hour on, sir&rdquo;&mdash;he put it with the firmness required to settle
+      the futility of an appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender&rsquo;s large surprise lost itself, however, promptly enough, in Mr.
+      Bender&rsquo;s larger ease. &ldquo;Why, do you really mean it, Lord Theign?&mdash;removing
+      already from view a work that gives innocent gratification to thousands?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said his lordship curtly, &ldquo;if thousands have seen it I&rsquo;ve done
+      what I wanted, and if they&rsquo;ve been gratified I&rsquo;m content&mdash;and invite
+      <i>you</i> to be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender showed more keenness for this richer implication. &ldquo;In other
+      words it&rsquo;s I who may remove the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll take it on my estimate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what, Lord Theign, all this time,&rdquo; Mr. Bender almost pathetically
+      pleaded, &ldquo;<i>is</i> your estimate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The parting guest had another pause, which prolonged itself, after he had
+      reached the door, in a deep solicitation of their hostess&rsquo;s conscious
+      eyes. This brief passage apparently inspired his answer. &ldquo;Lady Sandgate
+      will tell you.&rdquo; The door closed behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The charming woman smiled then at her other friend, whose comprehensive
+      presence appeared now to demand of her some account of these strange
+      proceedings. &ldquo;He means that your own valuation is much too shockingly
+      high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how can I know <i>how</i> much unless I find out what he&rsquo;ll take?&rdquo;
+       The great collector&rsquo;s spirit had, in spite of its volume, clearly not
+      reached its limit of expansion. &ldquo;Is he crazily waiting for the thing to be
+      proved <i>not</i> what Mr. Crimble claims?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he&rsquo;s waiting for nothing&mdash;since he holds that claim demolished
+      by Pappendick&rsquo;s tremendous negative, which you wrote to tell him of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vast, undeveloped and suddenly grave, Mr. Bender&rsquo;s countenance showed like
+      a barren tract under a black cloud. &ldquo;I wrote to <i>report</i>, fair and
+      square, on Pap-pendick, but to tell him I&rsquo;d take the picture just the
+      same, negative and all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but take it in that way not for what it is but for what it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We know nothing about what it &lsquo;isn&rsquo;t,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Mr. Bender, &ldquo;after all that
+      has happened&mdash;we&rsquo;ve only learned a little better every day what it
+      is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; his companion asked, &ldquo;the biggest bone of artistic contention&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo;&mdash;he took it from her&mdash;&ldquo;the biggest that has been thrown
+      into the arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for <i>that</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance; it
+      was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.
+      &ldquo;Well, if it&rsquo;s the biggest bone I won&rsquo;t touch it; I&rsquo;ll leave it to be
+      mauled by my betters. But since his lordship has asked me to name a price,
+      dear Mr. Bender, I&rsquo;ll name one&mdash;and as you prefer big prices I&rsquo;ll try
+      to make it suit you. Only it won&rsquo;t be for the portrait of a person nobody
+      is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my
+      great-grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!&rdquo;&mdash;and her visitor turned from her with
+      the hunch of overcharged shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such a
+      conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been
+      delivered into my hands&mdash;too charmingly; and you won&rsquo;t really pretend
+      that you don&rsquo;t recognise that and in fact rather like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness unparalleled&mdash;though
+      indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the question of whether he
+      had been artfully practised upon; an indifference to bad debts or
+      peculation like that of some huge hotel or other business involving a
+      margin for waste. He could afford, he could work waste too, clearly&mdash;and
+      what was it, that term, you might have felt him ask, but a mean measure,
+      anyway? quite as the &ldquo;artful,&rdquo; opposed to his larger game, would be the
+      hiding and pouncing of children at play. &ldquo;Do I gather that those uncanny
+      words of his were just meant to put me off?&rdquo; he inquired. And then as she
+      but boldly and smilingly shrugged, repudiating responsibility, &ldquo;Look here,
+      Lady Sandgate, ain&rsquo;t you honestly going to help me?&rdquo; he pursued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. &ldquo;Mr. Bender, Mr.
+      Bender, I&rsquo;ll help you if you&rsquo;ll help <i>me!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll really get me something from him to go on with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get you something from him to go on with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s all I ask&mdash;to get <i>that</i>. Then I can move the way I
+      want. But without it I&rsquo;m held up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall have it,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;if I in turn may look to <i>you</i> for
+      a trifle on account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he dryly gloomed at her, &ldquo;what do you call a trifle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean&rdquo;&mdash;she waited but an instant&mdash;&ldquo;what you would feel as
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do. You haven&rsquo;t the least idea, Lady Sandgate,&rdquo; he earnestly
+      said, &ldquo;<i>how</i> I feel at these foolish times. I&rsquo;ve never got used to
+      them yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, don&rsquo;t you understand,&rdquo; she pressed, &ldquo;that if I give you an advantage
+      I&rsquo;m completely at your mercy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what mercy,&rdquo; he groaned, &ldquo;do you deserve?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited a little, brightly composed&mdash;then she indicated her inner
+      shrine, the whereabouts of her precious picture. &ldquo;Go and look at her again
+      and you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His protest was large, but so, after a moment, was his compliance&mdash;his
+      heavy advance upon the other room, from just within the doorway of which
+      the great Lawrence was serenely visible. Mr. Bender gave it his eyes once
+      more&mdash;though after the fashion verily of a man for whom it had now no
+      freshness of a glamour, no shade of a secret; then he came back to his
+      hostess. &ldquo;Do you call giving me an advantage squeezing me by your sweet
+      modesty for less than I may possibly bear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I say fairer,&rdquo; she returned, &ldquo;than that, with my backing about
+      the other picture, which I&rsquo;ve passed you my word for, thrown in, I&rsquo;ll
+      resign myself to whatever you may be disposed&mdash;characteristically!&mdash;to
+      give for this one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a question of resignation,&rdquo; said Mr. Bender, &ldquo;you mean of course
+      what I may be disposed&mdash;characteristically!&mdash;<i>not</i> to
+      give.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She played on him for an instant all her radiance. &ldquo;Yes then, you dear
+      sharp rich thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you take in, I assume,&rdquo; he pursued, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;m just going to lean on
+      you, for what I want, with the full weight of a determined man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;I promise you I&rsquo;ll thoroughly obey the direction of
+      your pressure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right then!&rdquo; And he stopped before her, in his unrest, monumentally
+      pledged, yet still more massively immeasurable. &ldquo;How&rsquo;ll you have it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She bristled as with all the possible beautiful choices; then she shed her
+      selection as a heaving fruit-tree might have dropped some round ripeness.
+      It was for her friend to pick up his plum and his privilege. &ldquo;Will you
+      write a cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you want it right away.&rdquo; To which, however, he added, clapping
+      vainly a breast-pocket: &ldquo;But my cheque-book&rsquo;s down in my car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the door?&rdquo; She scarce required his assent to touch a bell. &ldquo;I can
+      easily send for it.&rdquo; And she threw off while they waited: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so sweet
+      your &lsquo;flying round&rsquo; with your cheque-book!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put it with promptitude another way. &ldquo;It flies round pretty well with
+      <i>Mr</i>&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender&rsquo;s cheque-book&mdash;in his car,&rdquo; she went on to Gotch, who had
+      answered her summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find
+      in the pocket a large red morocco case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; said Gotch&mdash;but with another word for his mistress.
+      &ldquo;Lord John would like to know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord John&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; she interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch turned to the open door. &ldquo;Here he is, my lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender&rsquo;s eye, to the
+      complication involved in his lordship&rsquo;s presence. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s he who went round
+      to Bond Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. &ldquo;To stop the show?&rdquo; And then as
+      the young man was already there: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve stopped the show?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s &lsquo;on&rsquo; more than ever!&rdquo; Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a
+      hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the
+      backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. &ldquo;But Theign should be
+      here!&rdquo;&mdash;he addressed her excitedly. &ldquo;I announce you a call from the
+      Prince.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince?&rdquo;&mdash;she gasped as for the burden of the honour. &ldquo;He
+      follows you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking,
+      recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of associational
+      advantage and auspicious possibility. &ldquo;Is the Prince <i>after</i> the
+      thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing but
+      his message. &ldquo;He was there with Mackintosh&mdash;to see and admire the
+      picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!&mdash;and
+      did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh in
+      his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our noble friend and
+      of which, embarrassed though I doubtless was,&rdquo; the young man pursued to
+      Lady Sandgate, &ldquo;I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so delighted
+      with it that he declared they mustn&rsquo;t think then of taking the thing off,
+      but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it&rsquo;s worth, and
+      he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and explain him his
+      reasons.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their hostess cast about for a sign. &ldquo;Why Theign is at Kitty&rsquo;s, worse
+      luck! The Prince calls on him <i>here?</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He calls, you see, on <i>you</i>, my lady&mdash;at five-forty-five; and
+      graciously desired me so to put it you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s very kind, but&rdquo;&mdash;she took in her condition&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not even
+      <i>dressed!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have time&rdquo;&mdash;the young man was a comfort&mdash;&ldquo;while I rush
+      to Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender&mdash;though it&rsquo;s so near&mdash;if
+      I just bag your car.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s, that&rsquo;s it, take his car!&rdquo;&mdash;Lady Sandgate almost swept him
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may use my car all right,&rdquo; Mr. Bender contributed&mdash;&ldquo;but what I
+      want to know is what the man&rsquo;s <i>after</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The man? what man?&rdquo; his friend scarce paused to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince then&mdash;if you allow he <i>is</i> a man! Is he after my
+      picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;ll wait, my dear fellow,
+      you&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh why should he &lsquo;wait&rsquo;?&rdquo; burst from their cautious companion&mdash;only
+      to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious
+      revolution. &ldquo;Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender&mdash;I won&rsquo;t give you up for
+      any Prince!&rdquo; With which she appealed again to Lord John. &ldquo;He wants to
+      &lsquo;congratulate&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On Theign&rsquo;s decision, as I&rsquo;ve told you&mdash;which I announced to
+      Mackintosh, by Theign&rsquo;s extraordinary order, under his Highness&rsquo;s nose,
+      and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick
+      perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the
+      Prince&rsquo;s interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their
+      actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. &ldquo;The
+      decision to remove the picture?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John also observed a discretion. &ldquo;He wouldn&rsquo;t hear of such a thing&mdash;says
+      it must stay stock still. So there you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a clamorous,
+      series of questions. &ldquo;But <i>where</i> are we, and what has the Prince to
+      do with Lord Theign&rsquo;s decision when that&rsquo;s all <i>I&rsquo;m</i> here for? What
+      in thunder <i>is</i> Lord Theign&rsquo;s decision&mdash;what was his
+      &lsquo;extraordinary order&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this
+      solicitor as he had already been put off. &ldquo;Lady Sandgate, <i>you</i> tell
+      him! I rush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. &ldquo;What the h&mdash;&mdash;
+      then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what &lsquo;sentiments&rsquo; did
+      he report round there that Lord Theign had been expressing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to
+      recognise the subject of his curiosity&mdash;for fear of other
+      recognitions. &ldquo;They put everything on <i>me</i>, my dear man&mdash;but I
+      haven&rsquo;t the least idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her askance. &ldquo;Then why does the fellow say you have?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. &ldquo;Because the
+      fellow&rsquo;s so agog that he doesn&rsquo;t know <i>what</i> he says!&rdquo; In addition to
+      which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on a salver
+      the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The large red morocco case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. &ldquo;Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on my
+      desk,&rdquo; she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again before
+      she resumed to her visitor: &ldquo;Mightn&rsquo;t we conclude before he comes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince?&rdquo; Mr. Bender&rsquo;s imagination had strayed from the ground to
+      which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps.
+      &ldquo;Will <i>he</i> want your great-grandmother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he may when he sees her!&rdquo; Lady Sandgate laughed. &ldquo;And Theign, when
+      he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every
+      information. Shall I fish it out for you?&rdquo; she encouragingly asked, beside
+      him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her persuasive
+      guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him, opening out the
+      gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but to help himself.
+      &ldquo;What enormous cheques! <i>You</i> can never draw one for two-pound-ten!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly what you deserve I <i>should</i> do!&rdquo; He remained after
+      this solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with
+      ceremonies; in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held
+      out to him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they
+      might have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before
+      him on the table, coming away with a brave gay &ldquo;Well, I leave it to you!&rdquo;
+       She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance for many
+      minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the recurrent
+      Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble, please&mdash;for Lady Grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Crimble <i>again?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;she took it discomposedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. &ldquo;Mr.
+      Crimble? Why he&rsquo;s just the man I want to see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. &ldquo;Here he is, my
+      lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell her ladyship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has come down,&rdquo; said Gotch while Hugh arrived and his companion
+      withdrew, and while Lady Grace, reaching the scene from the other quarter,
+      emerged in bright equipment&mdash;in her hat, scarf and gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      These young persons were thus at once confronted across the room, and the
+      girl explained her preparation. &ldquo;I was listening hard&mdash;for your knock
+      and your voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then know that, thank God, it&rsquo;s all right!&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was breathless,
+      jubilant, radiant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano?&rdquo; she delightedly cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano!&rdquo; he proudly gave back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano!&rdquo;&mdash;it carried even Lady Sandgate away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Mantovano&mdash;a sure thing?&rdquo; Mr. Bender jumped up from his business,
+      all gaping attention to Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just left our blest Bardi,&rdquo; said that young man&mdash;&ldquo;who hasn&rsquo;t
+      the shadow of a doubt and is delighted to publish it everywhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he publish it right here to <i>me?</i>&rdquo; Mr. Bender hungrily asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; Hugh smiled, &ldquo;you can try him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But try him how, where?&rdquo; The great collector, straining to instant
+      action, cast about for his hat &ldquo;Where <i>is</i> he, hey?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you wish I&rsquo;d tell you?&rdquo; Hugh, in his personal elation, almost
+      cynically answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you wait for the Prince?&rdquo; Lady Sandgate had meanwhile asked of her
+      friend; but had turned more inspectingly to Lady Grace before he could
+      reply. &ldquo;My dear child&mdash;though you&rsquo;re lovely!&mdash;are you sure
+      you&rsquo;re ready for him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the Prince!&rdquo;&mdash;the girl was vague. &ldquo;Is he coming?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At five-forty-five.&rdquo; With which she consulted her bracelet watch, but
+      only at once to wail for alarm. &ldquo;Ah, it <i>is</i> that, and I&rsquo;m not
+      dressed!&rdquo; She hurried off through the other room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bender, quite accepting her retreat, addressed himself again unabashed
+      to Hugh: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your blest Bardi I want first&mdash;I&rsquo;ll take the Prince
+      after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man clearly could afford indulgence now. &ldquo;Then I left him at
+      Long&rsquo;s Hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, right near! I&rsquo;ll come back.&rdquo; And Mr. Bender&rsquo;s flight was on the
+      wings of optimism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. &ldquo;Why does the Prince
+      come, and what in the world&rsquo;s happening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father has suddenly returned&mdash;it may have to do with that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. &ldquo;Mayn&rsquo;t
+      it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;and I think I don&rsquo;t care. I don&rsquo;t care,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;so
+      long as you&rsquo;re right and as the greatest light of all declares you are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He <i>is</i> the greatest&rdquo;&mdash;Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: &ldquo;I
+      could see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature!
+      There, <i>before</i> the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for
+      those great moments, practically to ourselves&mdash;without Macintosh to
+      take in what was happening or any one else at all to speak of&mdash;it was
+      but a matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and <i>I</i> had
+      conquered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naturally you had!&rdquo;&mdash;the girl hung on him for it; &ldquo;and what was
+      happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear
+      divination, one of the divinations of genius&mdash;with every creature all
+      these ages so stupid&mdash;you were being baptized on the spot a great
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn&rsquo;t think <i>he&rsquo;s</i>
+      one: that that eminent judge couldn&rsquo;t, even with such a leg up, rise to my
+      level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,&rdquo; Hugh went on in
+      his gladness, &ldquo;what for <i>us</i> has most particularly and preciously
+      taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your reputation,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;blazes out and your fortune&rsquo;s made?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did a happy violence to his modesty. &ldquo;Well, Bardi adores intelligence
+      and takes off his hat to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you need take off yours to nobody!&rdquo;&mdash;such was Lady Grace&rsquo;s
+      proud opinion. &ldquo;But I should like to take off mine to <i>him</i>,&rdquo; she
+      added; &ldquo;which I seem to have put on&mdash;to get out and away with you&mdash;expressly
+      for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. &ldquo;Ah, we&rsquo;ll go forth
+      together to him then&mdash;thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!&mdash;and
+      you&rsquo;ll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. &ldquo;The only thing is
+      that our awful American&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he warned her with a raised hand. &ldquo;Not to speak of our awful Briton!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign, unattended,
+      who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled up and held them a
+      minute in reprehensive view&mdash;all at least till Hugh undauntedly,
+      indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;ve a small,
+      but precious document to deliver you, if you&rsquo;ll allow me to do so; which I
+      feel it important myself to place in your hand.&rdquo; He drew from his breast a
+      pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed envelope; retaining the
+      latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while Lord Theign only opposed to
+      this demonstration an unmitigated blankness. He went none the less bravely
+      on. &ldquo;I mentioned to you the last time we somewhat infelicitously met that
+      I intended to appeal to another and probably more closely qualified
+      artistic authority on the subject of your so-called Moretto; and I in fact
+      saw the picture half an hour ago with Bardi of Milan, who, there in
+      presence of it, did absolute, did ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the
+      claim I&rsquo;ve been making. I then went with him to his hotel, close at hand,
+      where he dashed me off this brief and rapid, but quite conclusive,
+      Declaration, which, if you&rsquo;ll be so good as to read it, will enable you
+      perhaps to join us in regarding the vexed question as settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship, having faced this speech without a sign, rested on the
+      speaker a somewhat more confessed intelligence, then looked hard at the
+      offered note and hard at the floor&mdash;all to avert himself actively
+      afterward and, with his head a good deal elevated, add to his distance, as
+      it were, from every one and everything so indelicately thrust on his
+      attention. This movement had an ambiguous makeshift air, yet his
+      companions, under the impression of it, exchanged a hopeless look. His
+      daughter none the less lifted her voice. &ldquo;If you won&rsquo;t take what he has
+      for you from Mr. Crimble, father, will you take it from me?&rdquo; And then as
+      after some apparent debate he appeared to decide to heed her, &ldquo;It may be
+      so long again,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;before you&rsquo;ve a chance to do a thing I ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chance will depend on yourself!&rdquo; he returned with high dry emphasis.
+      But he held out his hand for the note Hugh had given her and with which
+      she approached him; and though face to face they seemed more separated
+      than brought near by this contact without commerce. She turned away on one
+      side when he had taken the missive, as Hugh had turned away on the other;
+      Lord Theign drew forth the contents of the envelope and broodingly and
+      inexpressively read the few lines; after which, as having done justice to
+      their sense, he thrust the paper forth again till his daughter became
+      aware and received it. She restored it to her friend while her father
+      dandled off anew, but coming round this time, almost as by a circuit of
+      the room, and meeting Hugh, who took advantage of it to repeat by a frank
+      gesture his offer of Bardi&rsquo;s attestation. Lord Theign passed with the
+      young man on this a couple of mute minutes of the same order as those he
+      had passed with Lady Grace in the same connection; their eyes dealt deeply
+      with their eyes&mdash;but to the effect of his lordship&rsquo;s accepting the
+      gift, which after another minute he had slipped into his breast-pocket. It
+      was not till then that he brought out a curt but resonant &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo;
+       While the others awaited his further pleasure he again bethought himself&mdash;then
+      he addressed Lady Grace. &ldquo;I must let Mr. Bender know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bender,&rdquo; Hugh interposed, &ldquo;does know. He&rsquo;s at the present moment with
+      the author of that note at Long&rsquo;s Hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must now write him&rdquo;&mdash;and his lordship, while he spoke and
+      from where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you write <i>there?</i>&rdquo;&mdash;and his daughter indicated Lady
+      Sandgate&rsquo;s desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his view
+      on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so tiresome
+      a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and had
+      reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display of
+      some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp &ldquo;Hallo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t find things?&rdquo; Lady Grace asked&mdash;as remote from him in one
+      quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the contrary!&rdquo; he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any further
+      surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an envelope,
+      which he addressed and brought away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like,&rdquo; said Hugh urbanely, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll carry him that myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how do you know what it consists of?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. But I risk it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner&mdash;he
+      even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the
+      finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself of any
+      measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the interesting
+      object, to redeem his offer of service. &ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ll learn,&rdquo; he simply
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And may <i>I</i> learn?&rdquo; asked Lady Grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I go <i>with</i> him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme bitterness&mdash;a
+      nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were familiar, but
+      before which their first movement was always tightly to close. &ldquo;<i>With</i>
+      me, my lord,&rdquo; said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined they should open
+      and intensifying the emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had his effect, and Lord Theign&rsquo;s answer, addressed to Lady Grace, made
+      indifference very comprehensive. &ldquo;You may do what ever you dreadfully
+      like!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as
+      absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open for
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her
+      expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have
+      preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could yet
+      find inspiration too in the very difficulty and the old faiths themselves
+      that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth and beauty in
+      her serious young face&mdash;as it had indeed a force that, not
+      indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for longer
+      exposure to. His shift of his attitude before she went out was fairly an
+      evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter&rsquo;s made him
+      afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a fear of the
+      other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace passes from us at any
+      rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale
+      concentration&mdash;leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You thanked me just now for Bardi&rsquo;s opinion after all,&rdquo; Hugh said with a
+      smile; &ldquo;and it seems to me that&mdash;after all as well&mdash;I&rsquo;ve grounds
+      for thanking you!&rdquo; On which he left his benefactor alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tit for tat!&rdquo; There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the
+      young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served his
+      turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to the
+      piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it again
+      the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally recognise
+      as Mr. Bender&rsquo;s forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising value he now
+      studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing from him an
+      articulate &ldquo;What in damnation&mdash;?&rdquo; His speculation dropped before the
+      return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room fell upon his
+      ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque into his
+      waistcoat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate appeared now in due&mdash;that is in the most happily
+      adjusted&mdash;splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter
+      and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, &ldquo;Tea will be
+      downstairs,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But you&rsquo;re alone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve just parted,&rdquo; her friend replied, &ldquo;with Grace and Mr. Crimble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Parted&rsquo; with them?&rdquo;&mdash;the ambiguity struck her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, they&rsquo;ve gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You speak,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;as if it were too gross&mdash;I They&rsquo;re surely
+      coming back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back to you, if you like&mdash;but not to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, what are you and I,&rdquo; she tenderly argued, &ldquo;but one and the same
+      quantity? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in&mdash;well,
+      whatever they&rsquo;re doing,&rdquo; she cheerfully added, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll get beautifully
+      used to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what I&rsquo;m afraid of&mdash;what such horrid matters make of
+      one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the worst then, you see&rdquo;&mdash;she maintained her optimism&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      recipient of royal attentions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said her companion, whom his honour seemed to leave comparatively
+      cold, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s simply as if the gracious Personage were coming to condole!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Impatient of the lapse of time, in any case, she assured herself again of
+      the hour. &ldquo;Well, if he only does come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John&mdash;the wretch!&rdquo; Lord Theign returned&mdash;&ldquo;will take care of
+      that: he has nailed him and will bring him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it then,&rdquo; his friend found occasion in the particular tone of
+      this reference to demand, &ldquo;what was it that, when you sent him off, John
+      spoke of you in Bond Street as specifically intending?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh he saw it now all lucidly&mdash;if not rather luridly&mdash;and thereby
+      the more tragically. &ldquo;He described me in his nasty rage as consistently&mdash;well,
+      heroic!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His rage&rdquo;&mdash;she pieced it sympathetically out&mdash;&ldquo;at your
+      destroying his cherished credit with Bender?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of it.
+      &ldquo;I had come between him and some profit that he doesn&rsquo;t confess to, but
+      that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he caught
+      the chance, to the Prince&mdash;and the People!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception of
+      it. &ldquo;By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People the
+      picture&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a sacrifice&mdash;yes!&mdash;to morbid, though respectable scruples.&rdquo;
+       To which he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene:
+      &ldquo;But I hope you&rsquo;ve nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Sandgate waited&mdash;then boldly took her line. &ldquo;None whatever! You
+      had reacted against Bender&mdash;but you hadn&rsquo;t gone so far as <i>that!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had it now all vividly before him. &ldquo;I had reacted&mdash;like a
+      gentleman; but it didn&rsquo;t thereby follow that I acted&mdash;or spoke&mdash;like
+      a demagogue; and my mind&rsquo;s a complete blank on the subject of my having
+      done so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that there only flushes through your conscience,&rdquo; she suggested, &ldquo;the
+      fact that he has forced your hand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fevered with the sore sense of it his lordship wiped his brow. &ldquo;He has
+      played me, for spite, his damned impertinent trick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She found but after a minute&mdash;for it wasn&rsquo;t easy&mdash;the right
+      word, or the least wrong, for the situation. &ldquo;Well, even if he did so
+      diabolically commit you, you still don&rsquo;t want&mdash;do you?&mdash;to back
+      out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Resenting the suggestion, which restored all his nobler form, Lord Theign
+      fairly drew himself up. &ldquo;When did I ever in all my life back out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never, never in all your life of course!&rdquo;&mdash;she dashed a bucketful at
+      the flare. &ldquo;And the picture after all&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The picture after all&rdquo;&mdash;he took her up in cold grim gallant despair&mdash;&ldquo;has
+      just been pronounced definitely priceless.&rdquo; And then to meet her gaping
+      ignorance: &ldquo;By Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s latest and apparently greatest adviser, who
+      strongly stamps it a Mantovano and whose practical affidavit I now
+      possess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Lady Sandgate gaped but the more&mdash;she wondered and yearned.
+      &ldquo;Definitely priceless?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Definitely priceless.&rdquo; After which he took from its place of lurking,
+      considerately unfolding it, the goodly slip he had removed from her
+      blotting-book. &ldquo;Worth even more therefore than what Bender so blatantly
+      offers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her attention fell with interest, from the distance at which she stood, on
+      this confirmatory document, her recognition of which was not immediate.
+      &ldquo;And is that the affidavit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a cheque to your order, my lady, for ten thousand pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten thousand?&rdquo;&mdash;she echoed it with a shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drawn by some hand unknown,&rdquo; he went on quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unknown?&rdquo;&mdash;again, in her muffled joy, she let it sound out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which I found there at your desk a moment ago, and thought best, in your
+      interest, to rescue from accident or neglect; even though it be, save for
+      the single stroke of a name begun,&rdquo; he wound up with his look like a
+      playing searchlight, &ldquo;unhappily unsigned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unsigned?&rdquo;&mdash;the exhibition of her design, of her defeat, kept
+      shaking her. &ldquo;Then it isn&rsquo;t good&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a Barmecide feast, my dear!&rdquo;&mdash;he had still, her kind friend,
+      his note of grimness and also his penetration of eye. &ldquo;But who is it
+      writes you colossal cheques?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then leaves them lying about?&rdquo; Her case was so bad that you would
+      have seen how she felt she must <i>do</i> something&mdash;something quite
+      splendid. She recovered herself, she faced the situation with all her
+      bright bravery of expression and aspect; conscious, you might have
+      guessed, that she had never more strikingly embodied, on such lines, the
+      elegant, the beautiful and the true. &ldquo;Why, who can it have been but poor
+      Breckenridge too?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Breckenridge&rsquo;&mdash;?&rdquo; Lord Theign had <i>his</i> smart echoes. &ldquo;What in
+      the world does he owe you money for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took her but an instant more&mdash;she performed the great repudiation
+      quite as she might be prepared to sweep, in the Presence impending, her
+      grandest curtsey. &ldquo;<i>Not</i>, you sweet suspicious thing, for my
+      great-grandmother!&rdquo; And then as his glare didn&rsquo;t fade: &ldquo;Bender makes my
+      life a burden&mdash;for the love of my precious Lawrence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which you&rsquo;re weakly letting him grab?&rdquo;&mdash;nothing could have been
+      finer with this than Lord Theign&rsquo;s reprobation unless it had been his
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head as in bland compassion for such an idea. &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t a
+      payment, you goose&mdash;it&rsquo;s a bribe! I&rsquo;ve withstood him, these trying
+      weeks, as a rock the tempest; but he wrote that and left it there, the
+      fiend, to tempt me&mdash;to corrupt me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without putting his name?&rdquo;&mdash;her companion again turned over the
+      cheque.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bethought herself, clearly with all her genius, as to this anomaly,
+      and the light of reality broke. &ldquo;He must have been interrupted in the
+      artful act&mdash;he sprang up with such a bound at Mr. Crimble&rsquo;s news. At
+      once then&mdash;for his interest in it&mdash;he hurried off, leaving the
+      cheque forgotten and unfinished.&rdquo; She smiled more intensely, her eyes
+      attached, as from fascination, to the morsel of paper still handled by her
+      friend. &ldquo;But of course on his next visit he&rsquo;ll <i>add</i> his great
+      signature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil he will!&rdquo;&mdash;and Lord Theign, with the highest spirit, tore
+      the crisp token into several pieces, which fluttered, as worthless now as
+      pure snowflakes, to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, ay, ay!&rdquo;&mdash;it drew from her a wail of which the character, for
+      its sharp inconsequence, was yet comic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This renewed his stare at her. &ldquo;Do <i>you</i> want to back out? I mean
+      from your noble stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As quickly, however, she had saved herself. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather do even what
+      you&rsquo;re doing&mdash;offer my treasure to the Thingumbob!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was touched by this even to sympathy. &ldquo;Will you then <i>join</i> me in
+      setting the example of a great donation&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the What-do-you-call-it?&rdquo; she extravagantly smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I call it,&rdquo; he said with dignity, &ldquo;the &lsquo;National Gallery.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She closed her eyes as with a failure of breath. &ldquo;Ah my dear friend&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would convince me,&rdquo; he went on, insistent and persuasive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the sincerity of my affection?&rdquo;&mdash;she drew nearer to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would comfort me&rdquo;&mdash;he was satisfied with his own expression. Yet
+      in a moment, when she had come all rustlingly and fragrantly close, &ldquo;It
+      would captivate me,&rdquo; he handsomely added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would captivate you?&rdquo; It was for <i>her</i>, we should have seen, to
+      be satisfied with his expression; and, with our more informed observation
+      of all it was a question of her giving up, she would have struck us as
+      subtly bargaining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gallantly amplified. &ldquo;It would peculiarly&mdash;by which I mean it
+      would so naturally&mdash;unite us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, that was all she wanted. &ldquo;Then for a complete union with you&mdash;of
+      fact as well as of fond fancy!&rdquo; she smiled&mdash;&ldquo;there&rsquo;s nothing, even to
+      my one ewe lamb, I&rsquo;m not ready to surrender.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, we don&rsquo;t surrender,&rdquo; he urged&mdash;&ldquo;we enjoy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she understood: &ldquo;with the glory of our grand gift thrown in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We quite swagger,&rdquo; he gravely observed&mdash;&ldquo;though even swaggering
+      would after this be dull without you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;ll <i>swagger</i> with you!&rdquo; she cried as if it quite settled and
+      made up for everything; and then impatiently, as she beheld Lord John,
+      whom the door had burst open to admit: &ldquo;The Prince?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Prince!&rdquo;&mdash;the young man launched it as a call to arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had fallen apart on the irruption, the pair discovered, but she
+      flashed straight at her lover: &ldquo;Then we can swagger now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Theign had reached the open door. &ldquo;I meet him below.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Demurring, debating, however, she stayed him a moment. &ldquo;But oughtn&rsquo;t I&mdash;in
+      my own house?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His lordship caught her meaning. &ldquo;You mean he may think&mdash;?&rdquo; But he as
+      easily pronounced. &ldquo;He shall think the Truth!&rdquo; And with a kiss of his hand
+      to her he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord John, who had gazed in some wonder at these demonstrations, was
+      quickly about to follow, but she checked him with an authority she had
+      never before used and which was clearly the next moment to prove
+      irresistible. &ldquo;Lord John, be so good as to stop.&rdquo; Looking about at the
+      condition of a room on the point of receiving so august a character, she
+      observed on the floor the fragments of the torn cheque, to which she
+      sharply pointed. &ldquo;And please pick up that litter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THE END. <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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