wonder for sale?"

She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. "Not,
surely, by _any_ monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!"

"I can't fancy him--no!" And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort.
"But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything."

These things might be, Lady Sandgate's face and gesture apparently
signified; but another question diverted her. "You're clearly a
wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you're on such
an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?"

"'Interested'?" he echoed; though it wasn't to gain time, he showed, for
he would in that case have taken more. "To the extent, you mean, of my
little percentage?" And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
smile on him: "Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about your
great-grandmother--you've nothing to place?"

It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when
she spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared.
"I ask because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to
the--how shall I name it?--the common weal; and because of my general
strong feeling that we don't want any more of our national treasures
(for I regard my great-grandmother as national) to be scattered about
the world."

"There's much in this country and age," he replied in an off-hand
manner, "to be said about _that_," The present, however, was not the
time to say it all; so he said something else instead, accompanying it
with a smile that signified sufficiency. "To my friends, I need scarcely
remark to you, I'm all the friend."

She had meanwhile seen the butler reappear by the door that opened to
the terrace, and though the high, bleak, impersonal approach of this
functionary was ever, and more and more at every step, a process to defy
interpretation, long practice evidently now enabled her to suggest, as
she turned again to her fellow-visitor a reading of it. "It's the friend
then clearly who's wanted in the park."

She might, by the way Banks looked at her, have snatched from his hand
a missive addressed to another; though while he addressed himself to her
companion he allowed for her indecorum sufficiently to take it up where
she had left it. "By her ladyship, my lord, who sends to hope you'll
join them below the terrace."

"Ah, Grace hopes," said Lady Sandgate for the young man's encouragement.
"There you are!"

Lord John took up th