“The Mantovano-Moretto?”
“The Moretto-Mantovano!”
Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled. “Hadn’t we better know which it is first?”
Hugh had a motion of practical indifference for this. “The public interest—playing so straight on the question—may help to settle it. By which I mean that it will profit enormously—the question of probability, of identity itself will—by the discussion it will create. The discussion will promote certainty——”
“And certainty,” Mr. Bender massively mused, “will kick up a row.”
“Of course it will kick up a row!”—Hugh thoroughly guaranteed that. “You’ll be, for the month, the best-abused man in England—if you venture to remain here at all; except, naturally, poor Lord Theign.”
“Whom it won’t be my interest, at the same time, to worry into backing down.”
“But whom it will be exceedingly mine to practise on”—and Hugh laughed as at the fun before them—“if I may entertain the sweet hope of success. The only thing is—from my point of view,” he went on—“that backing down before what he will call vulgar clamour isn’t in the least in his traditions, nothing less so; and that if there should be really too much of it for his taste or his nerves he’ll set his handsome face as a stone and never budge an inch. But at least again what I appeal to you for will have taken place—the picture will have been seen by a lot of people who’ll care.”
“It will have been seen,” Mr. Bender amended—“on the mere contingency of my acquisition of it—only if its present owner consents.”
“‘Consents’?” Hugh almost derisively echoed; “why, he’ll propose it himself, he’ll insist on it, he’ll put it through, once he’s angry enough—as angry, I mean, as almost any public criticism of a personal act of his will be sure to make him; and I’m afraid the striking criticism, or at least animadversion, of this morning, will have blown on his flame of bravado.”