to. That is the truth of it. I have come to
Paris to sell that Nanteuil. To realise, I suppose you would call it in
the financial world. Pro aris et focis, old friend. I want money for
the altar and the hearth. It has come to that. I cannot ask them in
Farlingford for more money, for I know they have none. And the church is
falling about our ears. The house wants painting. It is going the way of
the church, indeed."

"Ah!" said Turner, glancing at him over the bill of fare. "So you have
to sell an engraving. It goes to the heart, I suppose?"

Marvin laughed and rubbed his spare hands together, with an assumption
of cheerfulness in which some one less stout and well-to-do than his
companion might have perceived that dim minor note of pathos, which
always rings somewhere in a forced laugh.

"One has to face it," he replied. "Ne cedas malis, you know. I suddenly
found it was necessary. It was forced upon me, in fact. I found that my
niece was secretly helping to make both ends meet. A generous action,
made doubly generous by the manner in which it was performed."

"Miriam?" put in John Turner, who appeared to be absorbed in the
all-important document before him.

"Yes, Miriam. Do you know her? Ah! I forgot. You are her guardian and
trustee. I sometimes think my memory is failing. I found her out quite
by accident. It must have been going on for quite a long time. Heaven
will reward her, Turner! One cannot doubt it."

He absent-mindedly seized two pieces of bread from the basket offered to
him by a waiter, and began to eat as if famished.

"Steady, man, steady," exclaimed Turner, leaning forward with a
horror-stricken face to restrain him. "Don't spoil a grand appetite on
bread. Gad! I wish I could fall on my food like that. You seem to be
starving."

"I think I forgot to have any breakfast," said Marvin, apologetically.

"I dare say you did!" was the angry retort. "You always were a bit of
an ass, you know, Sep. But I have ordered a tiptop luncheon, and I'll
trouble you not to wolf like that."

"Well--well, I'm sorry," said the other, who, even in the far-off days
at Ipswich school, had always been in the clouds, while John Turner
moved essentially on the earth.

"And do not sell that Nanteuil to the first bidder," went on Turner,
with a glance, of which the keenness was entirely disarmed by the
good-natured roundness of his huge cheeks. "I know a man who will buy
it--at a good price, too. Where did you get it