uch purposes, was kindly admitted to your house when none
of you were there, or at least visible."

"Oh of course we don't see _every one!_"--she heroically kept it up.

"You don't see every one," Hugh bravely laughed, "and that makes it all
the more charming that you did, and that you still do, see me. I shall
really get Bardi," he pursued, "to go again to Verona----"

"The last thing before coming here?"--she had guessed before he could
say it; and still she sustained it, so that he could shine at her for
assent. "How happy they should like so to work for you!"

"Ah, we're a band of brothers," he returned--"'we few, we happy
few'--from country to country"; to which he added, gaining more ease for
an eye at Lord Theign: "though we do have our little rubs and disputes,
like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping
_interest_ of it all; since," he developed and explained, for his elder
friend's benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially
at least recovered, "when we're really 'hit' over a case we'll do almost
anything in life."

Lady Grace, recklessly throbbing in the breath of it all, immediately
appropriated what her father let alone. "It must be so lovely to _feel_
so hit!"

"It does spoil one," Hugh laughed, "for milder joys. Of course what I
have to consider is the chance--putting it at the _merest_ chance--of
Bardi's own wet blanket! But that's again so very small--though," he
pulled up with a drop to the comparative dismal, which he offered as an
almost familiar tribute to Lord Theign, "you'll retort upon me naturally
that I promised you the possibility of Pappendick's veto would be: all
on the poor dear old basis, you'll claim, of the wish father to the
thought. Well, I do wish to be right as much as I believe I am. Only
give me time!" he sublimely insisted.

"How can we prevent your using it?" Lady Grace again interrupted; "or
the fact either that if the worst comes to the worst--"

"The thing"--he at once pursued--"will always be at the least the
greatest of Morettos? Ah," he cried so cheerily that there was still a
freedom in it toward any it might concern, "the worst sha'n't come to
the worst, but the best to the best: my conviction of which it is that
supports me in the deep regret I have to express"--and he faced Lord
Theign again--"for any inconvenience I may have caused you by my
abortive undertaking. That, I vow here before Lady Grace, I will yet
more than ma