f them,
Douglas had assented without much difficulty. If other things went,
why not they?

But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a
moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through. A smarting sense
of loss--loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and
the future--burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the
sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr
Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his
eye. The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but
now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing. These
fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart
men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they
thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a
crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own
humiliation. "For what are you selling us?"--they seemed to say.
"Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger
mess of pottage--and we must pay! Unkind! degenerate!"

Presently, after the English drawing-rooms, and the library, with its
one Romney, came the French room, with its precious Watteaus, its
Latours, its two brilliant Nattiers. And here Herr Schwarz's coolness
fairly deserted him. He gave little shrieks of pleasure, which brought a
frown to the face of his companion, who was anxious to point out that a
great deal of the Watteau was certainly pupil-work, that the Latours
were not altogether "convincing" and the Nattiers though extremely
pretty, "superficial." But Herr Schwarz brushed him aside.

"_Nein, nein, lieber freund_! Dat Nattier is as fine as anything at
Potsdam. Dat I must have!" And he gazed in ecstasy at the opulent
shoulders, the rounded forms, and gorgeous jewelled dress of an
unrivalled Madame de Pompadour, which had belonged to her brother, the
Marquis de Marigny.

"You will have all or nothing, my good sir!" thought Falloden, and bided
his time.

Meanwhile Miklos, perceiving that his patron was irretrievably landed
and considering that his own "expert" dignity had been sufficiently
saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk. Only in the later
Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch.
A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and
written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a