_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