“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?”