y," he continued, by way of explanation.

"Ah! I see, and you turned it out!" Richard observed, not without an
inflection of irony.

"Yes. In those days I am afraid I did not discriminate very justly
between refinement of taste and self-indulgent fastidiousness. While
pluming myself upon an exalted standard of sensibility and sentiment, I
rather basely spared myself acquaintance with that, both in nature and
in art, which might cause me distress or disturbance of thought. I was
a mental valetudinarian, in short. I am ashamed of my defect of moral
courage and charity in relation to that picture."

Richard shifted his position slightly, looked fixedly at the canvas and
then down at his own hands in such disproportionate proximity to the
floor.

"Oh! you were not to blame," he said. "It is obviously a thing to laugh
at, or run from, unless you happen to have received a peculiar mental
and physical training. Anyhow the poor devil has found his way home now
and come into port safely enough at last?"

He glanced back at the picture, over his shoulder, as he moved across
the room.

"Perhaps he's even found a trifle of genuine sympathy--so don't vex
your righteous soul over your repudiation of him, my dear Julius. The
lapses of the virtuous may make, indirectly, for good. And your
instinct, after all, was both the healthy and the artistic one.
Velasquez ought to have been incapable of putting his talent to such
vile uses, and the first comer with a spark of true philanthropy in him
ought to have knocked that poor little monstrosity on the head."

Richard came to the writing-table, glanced at the papers which
encumbered it, made for an armchair drawn up beside the fire.

"Sit down, Julius," he said. "There is something quite else about which
I want to speak to you. I have been working through all these
documents, and they give rise to speculations neither strictly
scientific nor strictly orthodox, yet interesting all the same. You are
a dealer in ethical problems. I wonder if you can offer any solution of
this one, of which the basis conceivably is ethical. As to these
various owners of Brockhurst--Sir Denzil, the builder of the house, is
a delightful person, and appears to have prospered mightily in his
undertakings, as so liberal-minded and ingenious a gentleman had every
right to prosper. But after him--from the time, at least, of his
grandson, Thomas--everything seems to have gone to rather howling grief
here. We h