Hugh Crimble had come back from his voyage of discovery, and it was visible as he stood there flushed and quite radiant that he had caught in his approach Lord Theign’s last inquiry¹ and Mr. Bender’s reply to it. You would have imputed² to him on the spot the lively possession of a new idea, the sustaining sense of a message important enough to justify³ his irruption. He looked from one to the other of the three men, scattered⁴ a little by the sight of him, but attached eyes of recognition then to Lord Theign’s, whom he remained an instant longer communicatively smiling at. After which, as you might have gathered, he all confidently plunged⁵, taking up the talk where the others had left it. “I should say, Lord Theign, if you’ll allow me, in regard to what you appear to have been discussing, that it depends a good deal on just that question — of what your Moretto, at any rate, may be presumed or proved to ‘be.’ Let me thank you,” he cheerfully went on, “for your kind leave to go over your treasures.”

The personage he so addressed was, as we know, nothing if not generally affable; yet if that was just then apparent it was through a shade of coolness for the slightly heated familiarity of so plain, or at least so free, a young man in eye-glasses, now for the first time definitely apprehended⁷. “Oh, I’ve scarcely ‘treasures’— but I’ve some things of interest.”

Hugh, however, entering the opulent circle, as it were, clearly took account of no breath of a chill. “I think possible, my lord, that you’ve a great treasure — if you’ve really so high a rarity as a splendid Manto-vano.”

“A ‘Mantovano’?” You wouldn’t have been sure that his lordship didn’t pronounce the word for the first time in his life.

“There have been supposed to be only seven real examples about the world; so that if by an extraordinary chance you find yourself the possessor of a magnificent eighth ——”

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