"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_ I feel at these foolish times. I"ve never got used to them yet."
"Ah, don"t you understand," she pressed, "that if I give you an advantage I"m completely at your mercy?"
"Well, what mercy," he groaned, "do you deserve?"
She waited a little, brightly composed--then she indicated her inner shrine, the whereabouts of her precious picture. "Go and look at her again and you"ll see."
His protest was large, but so, after a moment, was his compliance--his heavy advance upon the other room, from just within the doorway of which the great Lawrence was serenely visible. Mr. Bender gave it his eyes once more--though after the fashion verily of a man for whom it had now no freshness of a glamour, no shade of a secret; then he came back to his hostess. "Do you call giving me an advantage squeezing me by your sweet modesty for less than I may possibly bear?"
"How can I say fairer," she returned, "than that, with my backing about the other picture, which I"ve pa.s.sed you my word for, thrown in, I"ll resign myself to whatever you may be disposed--characteristically!--to give for this one."
"If it"s a question of resignation," said Mr. Bender, "you mean of course what I may be disposed--characteristically!--_not_ to give."
She played on him for an instant all her radiance. "Yes then, you dear sharp rich thing!"
"And you take in, I a.s.sume," he pursued, "that I"m just going to lean on you, for what I want, with the full weight of a determined man."
"Well," she laughed, "I promise you I"ll thoroughly obey the direction of your pressure."
"All right then!" And he stopped before her, in his unrest, monumentally pledged, yet still more ma.s.sively immeasurable. "How"ll you have it?"
She bristled as with all the possible beautiful choices; then she shed her selection as a heaving fruit-tree might have dropped some round ripeness. It was for her friend to pick up his plum and his privilege.
"Will you write a cheque?"
"Yes, if you want it right away." To which, however, he added, clapping vainly a breast-pocket: "But my cheque-book"s down in my car."
"At the door?" She scarce required his a.s.sent to touch a bell. "I can easily send for it." And she threw off while they waited: "It"s so sweet your "flying round" with your cheque-book!"
He put it with prompt.i.tude another way. "It flies round pretty well with _Mr_----!"
"Mr. Bender"s cheque-book--in his car," she went on to Gotch, who had answered her summons.
The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: "You"ll find in the pocket a large red morocco case."
"Very good, sir," said Gotch--but with another word for his mistress.
"Lord John would like to know--"
"Lord John"s there?" she interrupted.
Gotch turned to the open door. "Here he is, my lady."
She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender"s eye, to the complication involved in his lordship"s presence. "It"s he who went round to Bond Street."
Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. "To stop the show?" And then as the young man was already there: "You"ve stopped the show?"
"It"s "on" more than ever!" Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. "But Theign should be here!"--he addressed her excitedly. "I announce you a call from the Prince."
"The Prince?"--she gasped as for the burden of the honour. "He follows you?"
Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking, recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of a.s.sociational advantage and auspicious possibility. "Is the Prince _after_ the thing?"
Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing but his message. "He was there with Mackintosh--to see and admire the picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!--and did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh in his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our n.o.ble friend and of which, embarra.s.sed though I doubtless was," the young man pursued to Lady Sandgate, "I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so delighted with it that he declared they mustn"t think then of taking the thing off, but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it"s worth, and he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and explain him his reasons."
Their hostess cast about for a sign. "Why Theign is at Kitty"s, worse luck! The Prince calls on him _here?_"
"He calls, you see, on _you_, my lady--at five-forty-five; and graciously desired me so to put it you."
"He"s very kind, but"--she took in her condition--"I"m not even _dressed!_"
"You"ll have time"--the young man was a comfort--"while I rush to Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender--though it"s so near--if I just bag your car."
"That"s, that"s it, take his car!"--Lady Sandgate almost swept him away.
"You may use my car all right," Mr. Bender contributed--"but what I want to know is what the man"s _after_."
"The man? what man?" his friend scarce paused to ask.
"The Prince then--if you allow he _is_ a man! Is he after my picture?"
Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. "If you"ll wait, my dear fellow, you"ll see."
"Oh why should he "wait"?" burst from their cautious companion--only to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious revolution. "Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender--I won"t give you up for any Prince!" With which she appealed again to Lord John. "He wants to "congratulate"?"
"On Theign"s decision, as I"ve told you--which I announced to Mackintosh, by Theign"s extraordinary order, under his Highness"s nose, and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot."
Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the Prince"s interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. "The decision to remove the picture?"
Lord John also observed a discretion. "He wouldn"t hear of such a thing--says it must stay stock still. So there you are!"
This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a clamorous, series of questions. "But _where_ are we, and what has the Prince to do with Lord Theign"s decision when that"s all _I"m_ here for?
What in thunder _is_ Lord Theign"s decision--what was his "extraordinary order"?"
Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this solicitor as he had already been put off. "Lady Sandgate, _you_ tell him! I rush!"
Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. "What the h---- then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what "sentiments" did he report round there that Lord Theign had been expressing?"
His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to recognise the subject of his curiosity--for fear of other recognitions.
"They put everything on _me_, my dear man--but I haven"t the least idea."