ference 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 soun