laim to regulate my behaviour
by my own standards. There you perfectly _are_ about the man, and it's
precisely what I say--that he's to hustle and harry me _because_ he's a
money-monster: which I never for a moment dreamed of, please understand,
when I let you, John, thrust him at me as a pecuniary resource at
Dedborough. I didn't put my property on view that _he_ might blow about
it------!"

"No, if you like it," Lady Sandgate returned; "but you certainly didn't
so arrange"--she seemed to think her point somehow would help--"that
you might blow about it yourself!"

"Nobody wants to 'blow,'" Lord John more stoutly interposed, "either hot
or cold, I take it; but I really don't see the harm of Bender's liking
to be known for the scale of his transactions--actual or merely imputed
even, if you will; since that scale is really so magnificent."

Lady Sandgate half accepted, half qualified this plea. "The only
question perhaps is why he doesn't try for some precious work that
somebody--less delicious than dear Theign--_can_ be persuaded on bended
knees to accept a hundred thousand for."

"'Try' for one?"--her younger visitor took it up while her elder more
attentively watched him. "That was exactly what he did try for when he
pressed you so hard in vain for the great Sir Joshua."

"Oh well, he mustn't come back to _that_--must he, Theign?" her ladyship
cooed.

That personage failed to reply, so that Lord John went on, unconscious
apparently of the still more suspicious study to which he exposed
himself. "Besides which there _are_ no things of that magnitude knocking
about, don't you know?--they've _got_ to be worked up first if they're
to reach the grand publicity of the Figure! Would you mind," he
continued to his noble monitor, "an agreement on some such basis as
_this_?--that you shall resign yourself to the biggest equivalent you'll
squeamishly consent to take, if it's at the same time the smallest he'll
squeamishly consent to offer; but that, that done, you shall leave him
free----"

Lady Sandgate took it up straight, rounding it off, as their companion
only waited. "Leave him free to talk about the sum offered and the sum
taken as practically one and the same?"

"Ah, you know," Lord John discriminated, "he doesn't 'talk' so much
himself--there's really nothing blatant or crude about poor Bender. It's
the rate at which--by the very way he's 'fixed': an awful way indeed, I
grant you!--a perfect army of reporter-