He removed Maggie's portrait from the fellowship of the picture of the Italian mother, and hid it in his chiffonier.

Whatever he might do in his endeavor to make good his boast to Hunt, for the present he would regard Maggie's portrait as his private property.

To use the painting as he had vaguely planned, before he had been surprised to find it Maggie's portrait, would be to pass it on into other possession where it might become public--where, through some chance, the Maggie of the working-girl's cheap shirt-waist might be identified with the rich Miss Cameron of the Grantham, to Maggie's great discomfiture, and possibly to her entanglement with the police.
When Miss Sherwood came into the library a little later, Larry tried to put Maggie and all matters pertaining to his previous night's adventure out of his mind.

He had enough other affairs which he was trying adroitly to handle--for instance, Miss Sherwood and Hunt; and when his business talk with her was ended, he remarked: "I saw Mr.Hunt last evening." He watched her closely, but he could detect no flash of interest at Hunt's name.
"You went down to your grandmother's ?" "Yes." "That was a very great risk for you to take," she reproved him.

"I'm glad you got back safely." Despite the disturbance Maggie had been to his thoughts, part of his brain had been trying to make plans to forward this other aim; so he now told Miss Sherwood of his wager with Hunt and his bringing away a picture--he said "one picture." He wanted to awaken the suppressed interest each had in the other; to help bridge or close the chasm which he sensed had opened between them.