Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you—especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses—I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John.

The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”

“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”

“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”

This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”

Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself—a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”—the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know—“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too—but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It has yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?”

Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.”

Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I envy you!”

“I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp—such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.”

Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet you,” he added, “I should have to be tempted—and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled.

His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.”

Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?”

“Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?”

“Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be reasonable—which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed—with the lovely ideas I have—if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!”

This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to have something!”

It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?”

“Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted.

It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have you an interest, Lord John?”

This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak—a little—as if I have an interest?”

Lord Theign gave the appeal—and the speaker—a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!”

“Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed—“I mean at Mr. Bender’s!”

“Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything—“go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here—has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.”

Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to offer him something!”

Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!”

“That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been enough for you!”

“I risk it, at any rate,” Lord John went on—“I put you, Bender, the question of whether you wouldn’t Move,’ as you say, to acquire that Moretto.”

Mr. Bender’s large face had a commensurate gaze. “As I say? I haven’t said anything of the sort!”

“But you do ‘love’ you know,” Lord John slightly overgrimaced.

“I don’t when I don’t want to. I’m different from most people—I can love or not as I like. The trouble with that Moretto,” Mr. Bender continued, “is that it ain’t what I’m after.”

His “after” had somehow, for the ear, the vividness of a sharp whack on the resisting surface of things, and was concerned doubtless in Lord John’s speaking again across to their host. “The worst he can do for me, you see, is to refuse it.”

Lord Theign, who practically had his back turned and was fairly dandling about in his impatience, tossed out to the terrace the cigarette he had but just lighted. Yet he faced round to reply: “It’s the very first time in the history of this house (a long one, Mr. Bender) that a picture, or anything else in it, has been offered——!”

It was not imperceptible that even if he hadn’t dropped Mr. Bender mightn’t have been markedly impressed. “Then it must be the very first time such an offer has failed.”

“Oh, it isn’t that we in the least press it!” Lord Theign quite naturally laughed.

“Ah, I beg your pardon—I press it very hard!” And Lord John, as taking from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion’s native form. “You don’t mean to say you don’t feel the interest of that Moretto?”

Mr. Bender, quietly confident, took his time to reply. “Well, if you had seen me up on that chair you’d have thought I did.”

“Then you must have stepped down from the chair properly impressed.”

“I stepped down quite impressed with that young man.”

“Mr. Crimble?”—it came after an instant to Lord John. “With his opinion, really? Then I hope he’s aware of the picture’s value.”

“You had better ask him,” Mr. Bender observed.

“Oh, we don’t depend here on the Mr. Crimbles!” Lord John returned.

Mr. Bender took a longer look at him. “Are you aware of the value yourself?”

His friend resorted again, as for the amusement of the thing, to their entertainer. “Am I aware of the value of the Moretto?”

Lord Theign, who had meanwhile lighted another cigarette, appeared, a bit extravagantly smoking, to wish to put an end to his effect of hovering aloof.

“That question needn’t trouble us—when I see how much Mr. Bender himself knows about it.”

“Well, Lord Theign, I only know what that young man puts it at.” And then as the others waited, “Ten thousand,” said Mr. Bender.

“Ten thousand?” The owner of the work showed no emotion.

“Well,” said Lord John again in Mr. Bender’s style, “what’s the matter with ten thousand?”

The subject of his gay tribute considered. “There’s nothing the matter with ten thousand.”

“Then,” Lord Theign asked, “is there anything the matter with the picture?”

“Yes, sir—I guess there is.”

It gave an upward push to his lordship’s eyebrows. “But what in the world——?”

“Well, that’s just the question!”

The eyebrows continued to rise. “Does he pretend there’s a question of whether it is a Moretto?”

“That’s what he was up there trying to find out.”

“But if the value’s, according to himself, ten thousand——?”

“Why, of course,” said Mr. Bender, “it’s a fine work anyway.”

“Then,” Lord Theign brought good-naturedly out, “what’s the matter with you, Mr. Bender?”

That gentleman was perfectly clear. “The matter with me, Lord Theign, is that I’ve no use for a ten thousand picture.”

“‘No use?’”—the expression had an oddity. “But what’s it your idea to do with such things?”

“I mean,” Mr. Bender explained, “that a picture of that rank is not what I’m after.”

“The figure,” said his noble host—speaking thus, under pressure, commercially—“is beyond what you see your way to?”

But Lord John had jumped at the truth. “The matter with Mr. Bender is that he sees his way much further.”

“Further?” their companion echoed.

“The matter with Mr. Bender is that he wants to give millions.”

Lord Theign sounded this abyss with a smile. “Well, there would be no difficulty about that, I think!”

“Ah,” said his guest, “you know the basis, sir, on which I’m ready to pay.”

“On the basis then of the Sir Joshua,” Lord John inquired, “how far would you go?”

Mr. Bender indicated by a gesture that on a question reduced to a moiety by its conditional form he could give but semi-satisfaction. “Well, I’d go all the way.”

“He wants, you see,” Lord John elucidated, “an ideally expensive thing.”

Lord Theign appeared to decide after a moment to enter into the pleasant spirit of this; which he did by addressing his younger friend. “Then why shouldn’t I make even the Moretto as expensive as he desires?”

“Because you can’t do violence to that master’s natural modesty,” Mr. Bender declared before Lord John had time to speak. And conscious at this moment of the reappearance of his fellow-explorer, he at once supplied a further light. “I guess this gentleman at any rate can tell you.”