ething?"

"About your picture?" Hugh betrayed on this head a graceless detachment.
"You too then want to sell?"

Oh she righted herself. "Never to a private party!"

"Mr. Bender's not after it?" he asked--though scarce lighting his
reluctant interest with a forced smile.

"Most intensely after it. But never," cried the proprietress, "to a
bloated alien!"

"Then I applaud your patriotism. Only why not," he asked, "carrying
that magnanimity a little further, set us all an example as splendid as
the object itself?"

"Give it you for nothing?" She threw up shocked hands. "Because I'm an
aged female pauper and can't make _every_ sacrifice."

Hugh pretended--none too convincingly--to think. "Will you let them have
it very cheap?"

"Yes--for less than such a bribe as Bender's."

"Ah," he said expressively, "that might be, and still----!"

"Well," she had a flare of fond confidence. "I'll find out what he'll
offer--if you'll on your side do what you can--and then ask them a third
less." And she followed it up--as if suddenly conceiving him a prig.
"See here, Mr. Crimble, I've been--and this very first time I--charming
to you."

"You have indeed," he returned; "but you throw back on it a lurid light
if it has all been for _that!_"

"It has been--well, to keep things as I want them; and if I've given you
precious information mightn't you on your side--"

"Estimate its value in cash?"--Hugh sharply took her up. "Ah, Lady
Sandgate, I _am_ in your debt, but if you really bargain for your
precious information I'd rather we assume that I haven't enjoyed it."

She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady
Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the
nearer door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. "I
won't bargain with the Treasury!"--she had passed out by the time Lady
Grace arrived.

II

As Hugh recognised in this friend's entrance and face the light of
welcome he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. "I
haven't been able to wait, I've wanted so much to tell you--I mean how
I've just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappen-dick, who was free
and ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must
have reached some time yesterday."

The girl's responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. "Ah, the dear
sweet thing!"

"Yes, he's a brick--but the question now hangs in the balance. Allowing
him time to ha