"Then on those grounds alone I'm to consider I'm utterly wrong?"
"Rather! Suppose you'd found a wonderful early sketch by Whistler or Burne-Jones, say, of a pretty woman—even then I should never have believed you'd be such a Philistine as to suppose that the person who sat for it had any interest for me. But a thing like that!" He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"How did it get there?"
"How did it get there?" he answered. "Last time I stayed with them, Tregelly sent it up to me for my critical opinion on it as a work of art." He laughed. "It made me so sick that I locked it up, and dropped or lost the key, or else I told the man to put it away. As he's an ass, I suppose he packed it among my things. I suppose Tregelly thought I gave it to his wife, and she thought I gave it back to him, as I heard no more about the thing then. But this time, as soon as I arrived," he smiled, "it was passionately reclaimed by both—and I promised to have a look."
Felicity clapped her hands.
"Then I'll send it back at once, and—will you have a look?"
"Good God, no! Never let me see the thing again." He took up a paper as if tired of the subject.
"Did you come back to look for it?" she asked.
"I came back because I received a three-volume novel wire from Savile, explaining what he called the situation."
"Fancy! Isn't he wonderful?"