ctures, 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