confidence.

He took it again with gay deprecation. "Ah, if by that time there's
anything left here to mount _on!_"

"Let us hope there will be at least what Mr. Bender, poor man, won't
have been able to carry off." To which Lady Grace added, as to strike a
helpful spark from the personage who had just joined them, but who had
the air of wishing to preserve his detachment: "It's to Lord John that
we owe Mr. Bender's acquaintance."

Hugh looked at the gentleman to whom they were so indebted. "Then do you
happen to know, sir, what your friend means to _do_ with his spoil?"

The question got itself but dryly treated, as if it might be a
commercially calculating or interested one. "Oh, not sell it again."

"Then ship it to New York?" the inquirer pursued, defining himself
somehow as not snubbed and, from this point, not snubbable.

That appearance failed none the less to deprive Lord John of a betrayed
relish for being able to displease Lady Grace's odd guest by large
assent. "As fast as ever he can--and you can land things there _now_,
can't you? in three or four days."

"I dare say. But can't he be induced to have a little mercy?" Hugh
sturdily pursued.

Lord John pushed out his lips. "A 'little'? How much do you want?"

"Well, one wants to be able somehow to stay his hand."

"I doubt if you can any more stay Mr. Bender's hand than you can empty
his purse."

"Ah, the Despoilers!" said Crimble with strong expression. "But it's
_we_," he added, "who are base."

"'Base'?"--and Lord John's surprise was apparently genuine.

"To want only to 'do business,' I mean, with our treasures, with our
glories."

Hugh's words exhaled such a sense of peril as to draw at once Lady
Grace. "Ah, but if we're above that _here_, as you know------!"

He stood smilingly corrected and contrite. "Of course I know--but you
must forgive me if I have it on the brain. And show me first of all,
won't you? the Moretto of Brescia."

"You know then about the Moretto of Brescia?"

"Why, didn't you tell me yourself?" It went on between them for the
moment quite as if there had been no Lord John.

"Probably, yes," she recalled; "so how I must have swaggered!" After
which she turned to the other visitor with a kindness strained clear of
urgency. "Will you also come?"

He confessed to a difficulty--which his whole face begged her also to
take account of. "I hoped you'd be at leisure--for something I've so at
heart!"

This had its effe