"I was a Cavalier poet," said H.M. "TEN POUNDS!"
A horrible suspicion seemed to strike Lady Brayle as she whirled round.
"Henry, you are not bidding? — Twenty!"
"Lord love a duck, what d'ye think I'm here for? — Thirty!" "Henry, this is too much. —Forty!"
"It's no good gettin' mad, Sophie. — Fifty!"
Lady Brayle, instead of directing her bids at the auctioneer, advanced her face towards H.M.
"Sixty!" she hissed.
H.M. also advanced his own unmentionable visage. "Seventy!" he hissed back.
The buzz of voices, never before heard in such volume at Willaby's, rose like a locust-storm. Twisting and swaying, the crowd pressed forward to get a look at what was being' exhibited. It is recorded that one lady, maddened, climbed up on a stranger's back so that she could see. Martin, his own sight obscured, tugged at the great man's coat-tail.
"Listen, sir! Take it easy! You don't even know what it is!"