Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/130

116 "Well then Lord John's."

"He's none of his either—more, I mean, than anyone else's. He's everyone's American, literally—to all appearance; and I've not to tell you, surely, with the freedom of your own visitors, how people stalk in and out here."

"No, father—certainly," she said. "You're splendidly generous."

His eyes seemed rather sharply to ask her then how he could improve on that; but he added as if it were enough: "What the man must by this time want more than anything else is his car."

"Not then anything of ours?" she still insisted.

"Of 'ours'?" he echoed with a frown. "Are you afraid he has an eye to something of yours?"

"Why, if we've a new treasure—which we certainly have if we possess a Mantovano—haven't we all, even I, an immense interest in it?" And before he could answer, "Is that exposed?" she asked.

Lord Theign, a little unready, cast about at his storied halls; any illusion to the "exposure" of the objects they so solidly