Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/227

Rh or four first. And I mean to appeal—I've another shot in my locker," he went on with his rather painfully forced smile to Lady Grace. "I had already written, you see, to dear old Bardi."

"Bardi of Milan?"—she recognised, it was admirably manifest, the appeal of his directness to her generosity, awkward as their predicament was also for her herself, and spoke to him as she might have spoken without her father's presence.

It would have shown for beautiful, on the spot, had there been any one to perceive it, that he devoutly recorded her intelligence. "You know of him?—how delightful of you! For the Italians, I now feel," he quickly explained, "he must have most the instinct—and it has come over me since that he'd have been more our man. Besides of course his so knowing the Verona picture."

She had fairly hung on his lips. "But does he know ours?"

"No—not ours yet. That is"—he consciously and quickly took himself up—"not yours! But as Pappendick went to Verona for us I've asked Bardi to do us the great favour