You really _must_ bring him now, you see.

You might as well, for, if you don't, I'll manage some other way when you are not around to protect him.

You don't want to trust him to me unprotected, do you ?" "No, and I won't," retorted Conrad Lagrange--which, though Mrs.Taine did not remark it, was also a twister.
"But after all, perhaps he won't come," she said with mock anxiety.
"Don't worry madam--he's just as much a fool as the rest of us." As the novelist spoke, they heard the voices of Miss Taine and her escort, James Rutlidge.

Mrs.Taine had only time to shake a finger in playful warning at her companion, and to whisper, "Mind you bring your artist to me, or I'll get him when you're not looking; and listen, don't tell Jim about him; I must see what he is like, first." At lunch, the next day, Conrad Lagrange greeted the artist in his bitterest humor.

"And how is the famous Aaron King, to-day?
I trust that the greatest portrait painter of the age is well; that the hotel people have been properly attentive to the comfort of their illustrious guest?
The world of art can ill afford to have its rarest genius suffer from any lack of the service that is due his greatness." The young man's face flushed at his companion's mocking tone; but he laughed.