“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?”