thank you for
your interesting view of my picture."

Hugh indulged in a brief and mute, though very grave, acknowledgment of
this expression; presently speaking, however, as on a resolve taken with
a sense of possibly awkward consequences: "May I--before you're sure of
your indebtedness--put you rather a straight question, Lord Theign?" It
sounded doubtless, and of a sudden, a little portentous--as was in fact
testified to by his lordship's quick stiff stare, full of wonder at
so free a note. But Hugh had the courage of his undertaking. "If I
contribute in ny modest degree to establishing the true authorship of
the work you speak of, may I have from you an assurance that my success
isn't to serve as a basis for any peril--or possibility--of its leaving
the country?"

Lord Theign was visibly astonished, but had also, independently of this,
turned a shade pale. "You ask of me an 'assurance'?"

Hugh had now, with his firmness and his strained smile, quite the look
of having counted the cost of his step. "I'm afraid I _must_, you see."

It pressed at once in his host the spring of a very grand manner. "And
pray by what right here do you do anything of the sort?"

"By the right of a person from whom you, on your side, are accepting a
service."

Hugh had clearly determined in his opponent a rise of what is called
spirit. "A service that you half an hour ago thrust on me, sir--and
with which you may take it from me that I'm already quite prepared to
dispense."

"I'm sorry to appear indiscreet," our young man returned; "I'm sorry to
have upset you in any way. But I can't overcome my anxiety--"

Lord Theign took the words from his lips. "And you therefore invite
me--at the end of half an hour in this house!--to account to you for my
personal intentions and my private affairs and make over my freedom to
your hands?"

Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that
stretched about him--the great loz-enged marble floor that might have
figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to
"stand." "I can only see the matter as I see it, and I should be ashamed
not to have seized any chance to appeal to you." Whatever difficulty he
had had shyly to face didn't exist for him now. "I entreat you to think
again, to think _well_, before you deprive us of such a source of just
envy."

"And you regard your entreaty as helped," Lord Theign asked, "by the
beautiful threat you are so good as