ones of the earth on the mother's side. On the
father's, on the other hand, I imagine, only a Jew stockbroker in the
City."

"Then they're rich--or ought to be," Sherringham suggested.

"Ought to be--ah there's the bitterness! The stockbroker had too short a
go--he was carried off in his flower. However, he left his wife a
certain property, which she appears to have muddled away, not having the
safeguard of being herself a Hebrew. This is what she has lived on till
to-day--this and another resource. Her husband, as she has often told
me, had the artistic temperament: that's common, as you know, among _ces
messieurs_. He made the most of his little opportunities and collected
various pictures, tapestries, enamels, porcelains, and similar gewgaws.
He parted with them also, I gather, at a profit; in short he carried on
a neat little business as a _brocanteur_. It was nipped in the bud, but
Mrs. Rooth was left with a certain number of these articles in her
hands; indeed they must have formed her only capital. She was not a
woman of business; she turned them, no doubt, to indifferent account;
but she sold them piece by piece, and they kept her going while her
daughter grew up. It was to this precarious traffic, conducted with
extraordinary mystery and delicacy, that, five years ago, in Florence, I
was indebted for my acquaintance with her. In those days I used to
collect--heaven help me!--I used to pick up rubbish which I could ill
afford. It was a little phase--we have our little phases, haven't we?"
Mr. Nash asked with childlike trust--"and I've come out on the other
side. Mrs. Rooth had an old green pot and I heard of her old green pot.
To hear of it was to long for it, so that I went to see it under cover
of night. I bought it and a couple of years ago I overturned and smashed
it. It was the last of the little phase. It was not, however, as you've
seen, the last of Mrs. Rooth. I met her afterwards in London, and I
found her a year or two ago in Venice. She appears to be a great
wanderer. She had other old pots, of other colours, red, yellow, black,
or blue--she could produce them of any complexion you liked. I don't
know whether she carried them about with her or whether she had little
secret stores in the principal cities of Europe. To-day at any rate they
seem all gone. On the other hand she has her daughter, who has grown up
and who's a precious vase of another kind--less fragile I hope than the
rest. May she not be