The great collector was but briefly checked. “Well, can’t you just act for Art?”
“Oh, you’re doing that yourself so powerfully,” Hugh laughed, “that I think I had best leave it to you!”
His friend looked at him as some inspector on circuit might look at a new improvement. “Don’t you want to go round acting with me?”
“Go ‘on tour,’ as it were? Oh, frankly, Mr. Bender,” Hugh said, “if I had any weight——!”
“You’d add it to your end of the beam? Why, what have I done that you should go back on me—after working me up so down there? The worst I’ve done,” Mr. Bender continued, “is to refuse that Moretto.”
“Has it deplorably been offered you?” our young man cried, unmistakably and sincerely affected. After which he went on, as his fellow-visitor only eyed him hard, not, on second thoughts, giving the owner of the great work away: “Then why are you—as if you were a banished Romeo—so keen for news from Verona?” To this odd mixture of business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of tested utility; so that Hugh put him another question: “Aren’t you here, sir, on the chance of the Mantovano?”
“I’m here,” he then imperturbably said, “because Lord Theign has wired me to meet him. Ain’t you here for that yourself?”
Hugh betrayed for a moment his enjoyment of a “big” choice of answers. “Dear, no! I’ve but been in, by Lady Sandgate’s leave, to see that grand Lawrence.”
“Ah yes, she’s very kind about it—one does go ‘in.’” After which Mr. Bender had, even in the atmosphere of his danger, a throb of curiosity. “Is any one after that grand Lawrence?”
“Oh, I hope not,” Hugh laughed, “unless you again dreadfully are: wonderful thing as it is and so just in its right place there.”