in case you don't know as I do how little the particular candidate I've named———"
"Had a right or a claim to succeed with her?" he broke in—all quick intelligence here at least. "No, I don't perhaps know as well as you do—but I think I know as well as I just yet require."
"There you are then! And if you did prevent," his hostess maturely pursued, "what wouldn't have been—well, good or nice, I'm quite on your side too."
Our young man seemed to feel the shade of ambiguity, but he reached at a meaning. "You're with me in my plea for our defending at any cost of effort or ingenuity———"
"The precious picture Lord Theign exposes?"—she took his presumed sense faster than he had taken hers. But she hung fire a moment with her reply to it. "Well, will you keep the secret of everything I've said or say?"
"To the death, to the stake, Lady Sandgate!"
"Then," she momentously returned, "I only want, too, to make Bender impossible. If you ask me," she pursued, "how I arrange that with my deep loyalty to Lord Theign———"
"I don't ask you anything of the sort," he
