Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/269

Rh "Because it was a tissue of expressions that may pass current—over counters and in awful newspapers—in his extraordinary world or country, but that I decline to take time to puzzle out here."

"If he didn't make himself understood," Lord John took leave to laugh, "it must indeed have been an unusual production for Bender."

"Oh, I often, with the wild beauty, if you will, of so many of his turns, haven't a notion," Lady Sandgate confessed with an equal gaiety, "of what he's talking about."

"I think I never miss his weird sense," her younger guest again loyally contended—"and in fact as a general thing I rather like it!"

"I happen to like nothing that I don't enjoy," Lord Theign rejoined with some asperity—"and so far as I do follow the fellow he assumes on my part an interest in his expenditure of purchase-money that I neither feel nor pretend to. He doesn't want—by what I spell out—the picture he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want—if one reads it so—the picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with great emphasis,