Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/317

Rh "His rage"—she pieced it sympathetically out—"at your destroying his cherished credit with Bender?"

Lord Theign was more and more possessed of this view of the manner of it. "I had come between him and some profit that he doesn't confess to, but that made him viciously and vindictively serve me up there, as he caught the chance, to the Prince—and the People!"

She cast about, in her intimate interest, as for some closer conception of it. "By saying that you had remarked here that you offered the People the picture?

"As a sacrifice—yes!—to morbid, though respectable scruples." To which he sharply added, as if struck with her easy grasp of the scene: "But I hope you've nothing to call a memory for any such extravagance?"

Lady Sandgate waited then boldly took her line. "None whatever! You had reacted against Bender but you hadn't gone so far as that!"

He had it now all vividly before him. "I had reacted—like a gentleman; but it didn't thereby follow that I acted—or spoke—like a