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