Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/54

40 Lady Sandgate took it in. "Ah, like Mr. Bender?"

"No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender."

This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought. "May I ask then—if one's to meet him—who he is?"

"Oh, father knows—or ought to—that I sat next him, in London, a month ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of Connoisseurship—which is upsetting, as perhaps you're not aware, all the old-fashioned canons of art-criticism, everything we've stupidly thought right and held dear; that he was to spend Easter in these parts, and that he should like greatly to be allowed some day to come over and make acquaintance with our things. I told him," Lady Grace wound up, "that nothing would be easier; a note from him arrived before dinner"

Lady Sandgate jumped the rest. "And it's for him you've come in."

"It's for him I've come in," the girl assented with serenity.

"Very good—though he sounds most