--he took it from her--"the biggest that has been thrown into the
arena for quite a while. I guess I can do with it for _that_."

Lady Sandgate, on this, after a moment, renewed her personal advance;
it was as if she had now made sure of the soundness of her main bridge.
"Well, if it's the biggest bone I won't touch it; I'll leave it to be
mauled by my betters. But since his lordship has asked me to name a
price, dear Mr. Bender, I'll name one--and as you prefer big prices I'll
try to make it suit you. Only it won't be for the portrait of a person
nobody is agreed about. The whole world is agreed, you know, about my
great-grandmother."

"Oh, shucks, Lady Sandgate!"--and her visitor turned from her with the
hunch of overcharged shoulders.

But she apparently felt that she held him, or at least that even if such
a conviction might be fatuous she must now put it to the touch. "You've
been delivered into my hands--too charmingly; and you won't really
pretend that you don't recognise that and in fact rather like it."

He faced about to her again as to a case of coolness
unparalleled--though indeed with a quick lapse of real interest in the
question of whether he had been artfully practised upon; an indifference
to bad debts or peculation like that of some huge hotel or other
business involving a margin for waste. He could afford, he could work
waste too, clearly--and what was it, that term, you might have felt him
ask, but a mean measure, anyway? quite as the "artful," opposed to his
larger game, would be the hiding and pouncing of children at play. "Do
I gather that those uncanny words of his were just meant to put me
off?" he inquired. And then as she but boldly and smilingly shrugged,
repudiating responsibility, "Look here, Lady Sandgate, ain't you
honestly going to help me?" he pursued.

This engaged her sincerity without affecting her gaiety. "Mr. Bender,
Mr. Bender, I'll help you if you'll help _me!_"

"You'll really get me something from him to go on with?"

"I'll get you something from him to go on with."

"That's all I ask--to get _that_. Then I can move the way I want. But
without it I'm held up."

"You shall have it," she replied, "if I in turn may look to _you_ for a
trifle on account."

"Well," he dryly gloomed at her, "what do you call a trifle?"

"I mean"--she waited but an instant--"what you would feel as one."

"That won't do. You haven't the least idea, Lady Sandgate," he earnestly
said, "_how