The Outcry | Page 5

the listener's
mystification. "Then why--this whole week that I've been in the
house--hasn't our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?"
"Because our good friend here has had no reason"--Lord John could
treat it now as simple enough. "Good as he is in all ways, he's so best of
all about showing the house and its contents that I haven't even thought
necessary to write him that I'm introducing Breckenridge."
"I should have been happy to introduce him," Lady Sandgate just
quavered--"if I had at all known he wanted it."
Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to
pronounce it a trifle he didn't care a fig for. "I surrender you that
privilege then--of presenting him to his host--if I've seemed to you to
snatch it from you." To which Lord John added, as with liberality
unrestricted, "But I've been taking him about to see what's worth

while--as only last week to Lady Lappington's Longhi."
This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady
Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. "Her Longhi?"
"Why, don't you know her great Venetian family group, the
What-do-you-call-'ems?--seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for
which he paid her her price before he left the house."
She could but make it more richly resound--almost stricken, lost in her
wistful thought: "Seven full-length figures? Her price?"
"Eight thousand--slap down. Bender knows," said Lord John, "what he
wants."
"And does he want only"--her wonder grew and grew--
"What-do-you-call-'ems'?"
"He most usually wants what he can't have." Lord John made scarce
more of it than that. "But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady
Lappington went at him."
It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. "How horrible--at
the rate things are leaving us!" But this was far from the end of her
interest. "And is that the way he pays?"
"Before he leaves the house?" Lord John lived it amusedly over. "Well,
she took care of that."
"How incredibly vulgar!" It all had, however, for Lady Sandgate, still
other connections--which might have attenuated Lady Lappington's
case, though she didn't glance at this. "He makes the most scandalous
eyes--the ruffian!--at my great-grandmother." And then as richly to
enlighten any blankness: "My tremendous Lawrence, don't you
know?--in her wedding-dress, down to her knees; with such
extraordinarily speaking eyes, such lovely arms and hands, such
wonderful flesh-tints: universally considered the masterpiece of the

artist."
Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much at the image evoked,
in which he wasn't interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it.
"And are you going to sell the masterpiece of the artist?"
She held her head high. "I've indignantly refused--for all his pressing
me so hard."
"Yet that's what he nevertheless pursues you to-day to keep up?"
The question had a little the ring of those of which the occupant of a
witness-box is mostly the subject, but Lady Sandgate was so far as this
went an imperturbable witness. "I need hardly fear it perhaps if--in the
light of what you tell me of your arrangement with him--his pursuit
becomes, where I am concerned, a figure of speech."
"Oh," Lord John returned, "he kills two birds with one stone--he sees
both Sir Joshua and you."
This version of the case had its effect, for the moment, on his fair
associate. "Does he want to buy their pride and glory?"
The young man, however, struck on his own side, became at first but
the bright reflector of her thought. "Is that wonder for sale?"
She closed her eyes as with the shudder of hearing such words. "Not,
surely, by any monstrous chance! Fancy dear, proud Theign------!"
"I can't fancy him--no!" And Lord John appeared to renounce the effort.
"But a cat may look at a king and a sharp funny Yankee at anything."
These things might be, Lady Sandgate's face and gesture apparently
signified; but another question diverted her. "You're clearly a
wonderful showman, but do you mind my asking you whether you're
on such an occasion a--well, a closely interested one?"
"'Interested'?" he echoed; though it wasn't to gain time, he showed, for
he would in that case have taken more. "To the extent, you mean, of my

little percentage?" And then as in silence she but kept a slightly grim
smile on him: "Why do you ask if--with your high delicacy about your
great-grandmother--you've nothing to place?"
It took her a minute to say, while her fine eye only rolled; but when she
spoke that organ boldly rested and the truth vividly appeared. "I ask
because people like you, Lord John, strike me as dangerous to the--how
shall I name it?--the common weal; and because of my general strong
feeling that we don't want any more of our national treasures (for I