"Pardon me," said his lordship—"I make a difference. It's what you wanted me to do."
The mystification, however, continued. "And you were not—as you seemed then—willing?"
Lord Theign waived cross-questions. "Well, I'm willing now—that's all that need concern us. Only, once more and for the last time," he added with all authority, "you can't have our Duchess!"
"You can't have our Duchess!"—and Lord John, as before the altar of patriotism, wrapped it in sacrificial sighs.
"You can't have our Duchess!" Lady Sandgate repeated, but with a grace that took the sting from her triumph. And she seemed still all sweet sociability as she added: "I wish he'd tell you too, you dreadful rich thing, that you can't have anything at all!"
Lord Theign, however, in the interest of harmony, deprecated that rigour. "Ah, what then would become of my happy retort?"
"And what—as it is," Mr. Bender asked—"becomes of my unhappy grievance?"
"Wouldn't a really great capture make up to you for that?"
"Well, I take more interest in what I want than in what I have—and it depends, don't you see, on how you measure the size."
Lord John had at once in this connection a bright idea. "Shouldn't you like to go back there and take the measure yourself?"
Mr. Bender considered him as through narrowed eyelids. "Look again at that tottering Moretto?"
"Well, its size—as you say—isn't in any light a negligible quantity."
"You mean that—big as it is—it hasn't yet stopped growing?"
The question, however, as he immediately showed, resided in what Lord Theign himself meant "It's more to the purpose," he said to Mr. Bender, "that I should mention to you the leading feature, or in other words the very essence, of my plan of campaign—which is to put the picture at once on view." He marked his idea with a broad but elegant gesture. "On view as a thing definitely disposed of."
"I say, I say, I say!" cried Lord John, moved by this bold stroke to high admiration.
Lady Sandgate's approval was more qualified. "But on view, dear Theign, how?"
"With one of those pushing people in Bond Street." And then as for the crushing climax of his policy: "As a Mantovano pure and simple."
"But my dear man," she quavered, "if it isn't one?"
Mr. Bender at once anticipated; the wind had suddenly risen for him and he let out sail. "Lady Sand-gate, it's going, by all that's—well, interesting, to be one!"
Lord Theign took him up with pleasure. "You seize me? We treat it as one!"
Lord John eagerly borrowed the emphasis. "We treat it as one!"
Mr. Bender meanwhile fed with an opened appetite on the thought—he even gave it back larger. "As the long-lost Number Eight!"
Lord Theign happily seized him. "That will be it—to a charm!"
"It will make them," Mr. Bender asked, "madder than anything?"
His patron—if not his client—put it more nobly. "It will markedly affirm my attitude."
"Which will in turn the more markedly create discussion."
"It may create all it will!"
"Well, if you don't mind it, I don't!" Mr. Bender concluded. But though bathed in this high serenity he was all for the rapid application of it elsewhere. "You'll put the thing on view right off?"
"As soon as the proper arrangement——"
"You put off your journey to make it?" Lady Sand-gate at once broke in.
Lord Theign bethought himself—with the effect of a gracious confidence in the others. "Not if these friends will act."
"Oh, I guess we'll act!" Mr. Bender declared.
"Ah, won't we though!" Lord John re-echoed.
"You understand then I have an interest?" Mr. Bender went on to Lord Theign.
His lordship's irony met it. "I accept that complication—which so much simplifies!"
"And yet also have a liberty?"
"Where else would be those you've taken? The point is," said Lord Theign, "that I have a show."
It settled Mr. Bender. "Then I'll fix your show." He snatched up his hat. "Lord John, come right round!"
Lord John had of himself reached the door, which he opened to let the whirlwind tremendously figured by his friend pass out first. Taking leave of the others he gave it even his applause. "The fellow can do anything anywhere!" And he hastily followed.
V
Lady Sandgate, left alone with Lord Theign, drew the line at their companion's enthusiasm. "That may be true of Mr. Bender—for it's dreadful how he bears one down. But I simply find him a terror."
"Well," said her friend, who seemed disposed not to fatigue the question, "I dare say a terror will help me." He had other business to which he at once gave himself. "And now, if you please, for that girl."
"I'll send her to you," she replied, "if you can't stay to luncheon."
"I've three or four things to do," he pleaded, "and I lunch with Kitty at one."
She submitted in that case—but disappointedly. "With Berkeley Square then you've time. But I confess I don't quite grasp the so odd inspiration that you've set those men to carry out."
He showed surprise and regret, but even greater decision. "Then it needn't trouble you, dear—it's enough that I myself go straight."
"Are you so very convinced it's straight?"—she wouldn't be a bore to him, but she couldn't not be a blessing.
"What in the world else is it," he asked, "when, having good reasons, one acts on 'em?"
"You must have an immense array," she sighed, "to fly so in the face of Opinion!"
"'Opinion'?" he commented—"I fly in its face? Why, the vulgar thing, as I'm taking my quiet walk, flies in mine! I give it a whack with my umbrella and send it about its business." To which he added with more reproach: "It's enough to have been dished by Grace—without your falling away!"
Sadly and sweetly she defended herself. "It's only my great affection—and all that these years have been for us: they it is that make me wish you weren't so proud."
"I've a perfect sense, my dear, of what these years have been for us—a very charming matter. But 'proud' is it you find me of the daughter who does her best to ruin me, or of the one who does her best to humiliate?"
Lady Sandgate, not undiscernibly, took her choice of ignoring the point of this. "Your surrenders to Kitty are your own affair—but are you sure you can really bear to see Grace?"
"I seem expected indeed to bear much," he said with more and more of his parental bitterness, "but I don't know that I'm yet in a funk before my child. Doesn't she want to see me, with any contrition, after the trick she has played me?" And then as his companion's answer failed: "In spite of which trick you suggest that I should leave the country with no sign of her explaining—?"
His hostess raised her head. "She does want to see you, I know; but you must recall the sequel to that bad hour at Dedborough—when it was you who declined to see her."
"Before she left the house with you, the next day, for this?"—he was entirely reminiscent. "What I recall is that even if I had condoned—that evening—her deception of me in my folly, I still loathed, for my friend's sake, her practical joke on poor John."
Lady Sandgate indulged in the shrug conciliatory. "It was your very complaint that your own appeal to her became an appeal from herself."
"Yes," he returned, so well he remembered, "she was about as civil to me then—picking a quarrel with me on such a trumped-up ground!—as that devil of a fellow in the newspaper; the taste of whose elegant remarks, for that matter, she must now altogether enjoy!"