The Outcry: -1911

'At the door?' She scarce required his assent to touch a bell. 'I can easily send for it.' And she threw off while they waited: 'It's so sweet your 'flying round' with your cheque-book!'

He put it with promptitude another way. 'It flies round pretty well with Mr——!'

'Mr. Bender's cheque-book—in his car,' she went on to Gotch, who had answered her summons.

The owner of the interesting object further instructed him: 'You'll find in the pocket a large red morocco case.'

'Very good, sir,' said Gotch—but with another word for his mistress. 'Lord John would like to know—'

'Lord John's there?' she interrupted.

Gotch turned to the open door. 'Here he is, my lady.'

She accommodated herself at once, under Mr. Bender's eye, to the complication involved in his lordship's presence. 'It's he who went round to Bond Street.'

Mr. Bender stared, but saw the connection. 'To stop the show?' And then as the young man was already there: 'You've stopped the show?'

'It's 'on' more than ever!' Lord John responded while Gotch retired: a hurried, flurried, breathless Lord John, strikingly different from the backward messenger she had lately seen despatched. 'But Theign should be here!'—he addressed her excitedly. 'I announce you a call from the Prince.'

'The Prince?'—she gasped as for the burden of the honour. 'He follows you?'

Mr. Bender, with an eagerness and a candour there was no mistaking, recognised on behalf of his ampler action a world of associational advantage and auspicious possibility. 'Is the Prince after the thing?'

Lord John remained, in spite of this challenge, conscious of nothing but his message. 'He was there with Mackintosh—to see and admire the picture; which he thinks, by the way, a Mantovano pure and simple!—and did me the honour to remember me. When he heard me report to Mackintosh in his presence the sentiments expressed to me here by our noble friend and of which, embarrassed though I doubtless was,' the young man pursued to Lady Sandgate, 'I gave as clear an account as I could, he was so delighted with it that he declared they mustn't think then of taking the thing off, but must on the contrary keep putting it forward for all it's worth, and he would come round and congratulate and thank Theign and explain him his reasons.'

Their hostess cast about for a sign. 'Why Theign is at Kitty's, worse luck! The Prince calls on him here?'

'He calls, you see, on you, my lady—at five-forty-five; and graciously desired me so to put it you.'

'He's very kind, but'—she took in her condition—'I'm not even dressed!'

'You'll have time'—the young man was a comfort—'while I rush to Berkeley Square. And pardon me, Bender— though it's so near—if I just bag your car.'

'That's, that's it, take his car!'—Lady Sandgate almost swept him away.

'You may use my car all right,' Mr. Bender contributed—'but what I want to know is what the man's after.'

'The man? what man?' his friend scarce paused to ask.

'The Prince then—if you allow he is a man! Is he after my picture?'

Lord John vividly disclaimed authority. 'If you'll wait, my dear fellow, you'll see.'

'Oh why should he 'wait'?' burst from their cautious companion—only to be caught up, however, in the next breath, so swift her gracious revolution. 'Wait, wait indeed, Mr. Bender—I won't give you up for any Prince!' With which she appealed again to Lord John. 'He wants to 'congratulate'?'

'On Theign's decision, as I've told you—which I announced to Mackintosh, by Theign's extraordinary order, under his Highness's nose, and which his Highness, by the same token, took up like a shot.'

Her face, as she bethought herself, was convulsed as by some quick perception of what her informant must have done and what therefore the Prince's interest rested on; all, however, to the effect, given their actual company, of her at once dodging and covering that issue. 'The decision to remove the picture?'

Lord John also observed a discretion. 'He wouldn't hear of such a thing—says it must stay stock still. So there you are!'

This determined in Mr. Bender a not unnatural, in fact quite a clamorous, series of questions. 'But where are we, and what has the Prince to do with Lord Theign's decision when that's all I'm here for? What in thunder is Lord Theign's decision—what was his 'extraordinary order'?'

Lord John, too long detained and his hand now on the door, put off this solicitor as he had already been put off. 'Lady Sandgate, you tell him! I rush!'

Mr. Bender saw him vanish, but all to a greater bewilderment. 'What the h—— then (I beg your pardon!) is he talking about, and what 'sentiments' did he report round there that Lord Theign had been expressing?'

His hostess faced it not otherwise than if she had resolved not to recognise the subject of his curiosity—for fear of other recognitions. 'They put everything on me, my dear man—but I haven't the least idea.'

He looked at her askance. 'Then why does the fellow say you have?'

Much at a loss for the moment, she yet found her way. 'Because the fellow's so agog that he doesn't know what he says!' In addition to which she was relieved by the reappearance of Gotch, who bore on a salver the object he had been sent for and to which he duly called attention.

'The large red morocco case.'