dea whether he may have wanted to marry her?"

"He was very much taken with her. But how can he think about marrying,
Arthur? You do say the strangest things. And after Dagnall's
behaviour too."

"_Raison de plus!_ That girl has money, my dear, and will have more,
when the old aunts depart this life. If you want Duggy still to go into
Parliament, and to be able to do anything for the younger ones, you'll
keep an eye on her."

Lady Laura, however, was too depressed to welcome the subject. The gong
rang for dinner, and as they were leaving the room, Sir Arthur said--

"There are two men coming down to-morrow to see the pictures, Laura. If
I were you, I should keep out of the way."

She gave him a startled look. But they were already on the threshold of
the dining-room, where a butler and two footmen waited. The husband and
wife took their places opposite each other in the stately panelled room,
which contained six famous pictures. Over the mantelpiece was a
half-length Gainsborough, one of the loveliest portraits in the world, a
miracle of shining colour and languid grace, the almond eyes with their
intensely black pupils and black eyebrows looking down, as it seemed,
contemptuously upon this after generation, so incurably lacking in its
own supreme refinement. Opposite Lady Laura was a full-length Van Dyck
of the Genoese period, a mother in stiff brocade and ruff, with an
adorable child at her knee; and behind her chair was the great Titian of
the house, a man in armour, subtle and ruthless as the age which bred
him, his hawk's eye brooding on battles past, and battles to come, while
behind him stretched the Venetian lagoon, covered dimly with the fleet
of the great republic which had employed him. Facing the Gainsborough
hung one of Cuyp's few masterpieces--a mass of shipping on the Scheldt,
with Dordrecht in the background. For play and interplay of everything
that delights the eye--light and distance, transparent water, and
hovering clouds, the lustrous brown of fishing boats, the beauty of
patched sails and fluttering flags--for both literary and historic
suggestion, Dutch art had never done better. Impressionists and
post-impressionists came down occasionally to stay at Flood--for Sir
Arthur liked to play Maecenas--and were allowed to deal quite frankly
with the pictures, as they wandered round the room at dessert, cigarette
in hand, pointing out the absurdities of the Cuyp and the Titian. Their
host, who knew