The Outcry: -1911

'Of 'ours'?' he echoed with a frown. 'Are you afraid he has an eye to something of yours? '

'Why, if we've a new treasure—which we certainly have if we possess a Mantovano—haven't we all, even I, an immense interest in it?' And before he could answer, 'Is that exposed?' she asked.

Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any illusion to the 'exposure' of the objects they so solidly sheltered was obviously unpleasant to him. But then it was as if he found at a stroke both his own reassurance and his daughter's. 'How can there be a question of it when he only wants Sir Joshuas?'

'He wants ours?' the girl gasped.

'At absolutely any price.'

'But you're not,' she cried, 'discussing it?'

He hesitated as between chiding and contenting her—then he handsomely chose. 'My dear child, for what do you take me?' With which he impatiently started, through the long and stately perspective, for the saloon.

She sank into a chair when he had gone; she sat there some moments in a visible tension of thought, her hands clasped in her lap and her dropped eyes fixed and unperceiving; but she sprang up as Hugh Crimble, in search of her, again stood before her. He presented himself as with winged sandals.

'What luck to find you! I must take my spin back.'

'You've seen everything as you wished?'

'Oh,' he smiled, 'I've seen wonders.'

She showed her pleasure. 'Yes, we've got some things.'

'So Mr. Bender says!' he laughed. 'You've got five or six—'

'Only five or six?' she cried in bright alarm.

''Only'?' he continued to laugh. 'Why, that's enormous, five or six things of the first importance! But I think I ought to mention to you,' he added, 'a most barefaced 'Rubens' there in the library.'

'It isn't a Rubens?'

'No more than I'm a Ruskin.'

'Then you'll brand us—expose us for it?'

'No, I'll let you off—I'll be quiet if you're good, if you go straight. I'll only hold it in terrorem. One can't be sure in these dreadful days—that's always to remember; so that if you're not good I'll come down on you with it. But to balance against that threat,' he went on, 'I've made the very grandest find. At least I believe I have!'

She was all there for this news. 'Of the Manto-vano—hidden in the other thing?'

Hugh wondered—almost as if she had been before him. 'You don't mean to say you've had the idea of that?'

'No, but my father has told me.'

'And is your father,' he eagerly asked, 'really gratified?'

With her conscious eyes on him—her eyes could clearly be very conscious about her father—she considered a moment. 'He always prefers old associations and appearances to new; but I'm sure he'll resign himself if you see your way to a certainty.'

'Well, it will be a question of the weight of expert opinion that I shall invoke. But I'm not afraid,' he resolutely said, 'and I shall make the thing, from its splendid rarity, the crown and flower of your glory.'

Her serious face shone at him with a charmed gratitude. 'It's awfully beautiful then your having come to us so. It's awfully beautiful your having brought us this way, in a flash—as dropping out of a chariot of fire—more light and what you apparently feel with myself as more honour.'

'Ah, the beauty's in your having yourself done it!' he returned. He gave way to the positive joy of it. 'If I've brought the 'light' and the rest—that's to say the very useful information—who in the world was it brought me?'

She had a gesture of protest 'You'd have come in some other way.'

'I'm not so sure! I'm beastly shy—little as I may seem to show it: save in great causes, when I'm horridly bold and hideously offensive. Now at any rate I only know what has been.' She turned off for it, moving away from him as with a sense of mingled things that made for unrest; and he had the next moment grown graver under the impression. 'But does anything in it all,' he asked, 'trouble you?'

She faced about across the wider space, and there was a different note in what she brought out. 'I don't know what forces me so to tell you things.'

''Tell' me?' he stared. 'Why, you've told me nothing more monstrous than that I've been welcome!'

'Well, however that may be, what did you mean just now by the chance of our not 'going straight'? When you said you'd expose our bad—or is it our false?—Rubens in the event of a certain danger.'

'Oh, in the event of your ever being bribed'—he laughed again as with relief. And then as her face seemed to challenge the word: 'Why, to let anything—of your best!—ever leave Dedborough. By which I mean really of course leave the country.' She turned again on this, and something in her air made him wonder. 'I hope you don't feel there is such a danger? I understood from you half an hour ago that it was unthinkable.'

'Well, it was, to me, half an hour ago,' she said as she came nearer. 'But if it has since come up?'

''If' it has! But has it? In the form of that monster? What Mr. Bender wants is the great Duchess,' he recalled.