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 daught