“That’s why our friend here didn’t speak then,” Hugh said with a better light—“which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn’t do, either. But they’ve a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty—if we don’t do something energetic—of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the rumour current—as too horrific to believe—of Lord Theign’s putting up his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent authorities.”
“Of whom,” said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, “you’re of course seen as not the least.”
“Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I’m as yet—however I’m ‘seen’—the whole collection. But we’ve time”—he rested on that “The fat, if you’ll allow me the expression, is on the fire—which, as I see the matter, is where this particular fat should be.”
“Is the article, then,” his companion appealed, “very severe?”
“I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent—and the great thing is that it immensely ‘marks,’ as they say. It will have made a big public difference—from this day; though it’s of course aimed not so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow to tackle.”
“Exactly”—she was full of the saving vision; “but as the conditions are directly embodied in persons——”
“Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it bells three or four.”
“Yes,” she richly brooded—“Lady Lappington is a cat!”
“She will have been ‘belled,’ at any rate, with your father,” Hugh amusedly went on, “to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good for us—I mean for us in particular.” Yet he had to bethink himself. “The case depends a good deal of course on how your father takes such a resounding rap.”
“Oh, I know how he’ll take it!”—her perception went all the way.