beyond everything else was that for your original dear
divination, one of the divinations of genius--with every creature all
these ages so stupid--you were being baptized on the spot a great man."

"Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn't think
_he's_ one: that that eminent judge couldn't, even with such a leg up,
rise to my level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,"
Hugh went on in his gladness, "what for _us_ has most particularly and
preciously taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career--"

"Your reputation," she cried, "blazes out and your fortune's made?"

He did a happy violence to his modesty. "Well, Bardi adores intelligence
and takes off his hat to me."

"Then you need take off yours to nobody!"--such was Lady Grace's proud
opinion. "But I should like to take off mine to _him_," she added;
"which I seem to have put on--to get out and away with you--expressly
for that."

Hugh, as he looked her over, took it up in bliss. "Ah, we'll go forth
together to him then--thanks to your happy, splendid impulse!--and
you'll back him gorgeously up in the good he thinks of me."

His friend yet had on this a sombre second thought. "The only thing is
that our awful American----!"

But he warned her with a raised hand. "Not to speak of our awful
Briton!"

For the door had opened from the lobby, admitting Lord Theign,
unattended, who, at sight of his daughter and her companion, pulled
up and held them a minute in reprehensive view--all at least till Hugh
undauntedly, indeed quite cheerfully, greeted him.

"Since you find me again in your path, my lord, it's because I've a
small, but precious document to deliver you, if you'll allow me to do
so; which I feel it important myself to place in your hand." He drew
from his breast a pocket-book and extracted thence a small unsealed
envelope; retaining the latter a trifle helplessly in his hand while
Lord Theign only opposed to this demonstration an unmitigated blankness.
He went none the less bravely on. "I mentioned to you the last time we
somewhat infelicitously met that I intended to appeal to another and
probably more closely qualified artistic authority on the subject of
your so-called Moretto; and I in fact saw the picture half an hour ago
with Bardi of Milan, who, there in presence of it, did absolute, did
ideal justice, as I had hoped, to the claim I've been making. I then
went with him to his hotel, close at hand, where