Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/35

Rh —as only last week to Lady Lappington's Longhi."

This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. "Her Longhi?"

"Why, don't you know her great Venetian family group, the What-do-you-call-'ems?—seven full-length figures, each one a gem, for which he paid her her price before he left the house."

She could but make it more richly resound—almost stricken, lost in her wistful thought: "Seven full-length figures? Her price?"

"Eight thousand—slap down. Bender knows," said Lord John, "what he wants."

"And does he want only"—her wonder grew and grew—"'What-do-you-call-'ems'?"

"He most usually wants what he can't have." Lord John made scarce more of it than that. "But, awfully hard up as I fancy her, Lady Lappington went at him."

It determined in his friend a boldly critical attitude. "How horrible—at the rate things are leaving us!" But this was far from the