ir--worked up
to something quite openly wilful and passionate. "No kind of a furious
flaunting one, under _my_ patronage, that I can prevent, my boy! The
Dedborough picture in the market--owing to horrid little circumstances
that regard myself alone--is the Dedborough picture at a decent,
sufficient, civilised Dedborough price, and nothing else whatever; which
I beg you will take as my last word on the subject."

Lord John, trying whether he _could_ take it, momentarily mingled his
hushed state with that of their hostess, to whom he addressed a helpless
look; after which, however, he appeared to find that he could only
reassert himself. "May I nevertheless reply that I think you'll not be
able to prevent _anything?_--since the discussed object will completely
escape your control in New York!"

"And almost any discussed object"--Lady Sand-gate rose to the occasion
also--"is in New York, by what one hears, easily _worth_ a Hundred
Thousand!"

Lord Theign looked from one of them to the other. "I sell the man a
Hundred Thousand worth of swagger and advertisement; and of fraudulent
swagger and objectionable advertisement at that?"

"Well"--Lord John was but briefly baffled--"when the picture's his you
can't help its doing what it can and what it will for him anywhere!"

"Then it isn't his yet," the elder man retorted--"and I promise you
never will be if he has _sent_ you to me with his big drum!"

Lady Sandgate turned sadly on this to her associate in patience, as
if the case were now really beyond them. "Yes, how indeed can it ever
_become_ his if Theign simply won't let him pay for it?"

Her question was unanswerable. "It's the first time in all my life I've
known a man feel insulted, in such a piece of business, by happening
_not_ to be, in the usual way, more or less swindled!"

"Theign is unable to take it in," her ladyship explained, "that--as I've
heard it said of all these money-monsters of the new type--Bender simply
can't _afford_ not to be cited and celebrated as the biggest buyer who
ever lived."

"Ah, cited and celebrated at my _expense_--say it at once and have it
over, that I may enjoy what you all want to do to me!"

"The dear man's inimitable--at his 'expense'!" It was more than Lord
John could bear as he fairly flung himself off in his derisive impotence
and addressed his wail to Lady Sandgate.

"Yes, at my expense is exactly what I mean," Lord Theign
asseverated--"at the expense of my modest c