John writhed. He had set his heart on this woman. He had bent her strong will to love him as a proud woman only can. She had been hard to win, but she was his as much as if they were already married; his by right, as the living Galatea was by right the sculptor's, who gave her marble heart the throbbing life and love of his own. "She is mine--I cannot give her up," he said aloud. There was no voice, nor any that answered. Strange how the ploughshare turns up little tags and ends of forgotten rubbish buried by the mould of a few years' dust. One utterance of Archie's, absolutely forgotten till now, was continually recurring to John's mind. Its barbed point rankled. "There must be a mint of money in an old barrack stuffed full of gimcracks like this. If ever I wanted a hundred or two, I would trot out one of those little silver Johnnies in no time if they were mine." And he would. If the thought of what Colonel Tempest and Archie would achieve after his own death had stung John as Archie said that, how should he bear to stand by and _see_ them do it? The books, the pictures, the family manuscripts which he was even then arranging, the jewels, the renowned diamond necklace that the Spanish government had offered to buy from his grandfather, which he had hoped one day to clasp on Di's neck--all the possessions of the past but almost regal state of a great name, which he had kept with such a reverent hand--he should live to see them cast right and left, lost, sold, squandered, stolen. Archie would give the diamonds to the first actress who asked for them. Colonel Tempest would be equally "open-handed." As the days went on, John shut his eyes to the pictures in the gallery as he passed through it. A mute suspense and reproach seemed to hang about the whole place. The Velasquez and the Titian peered at him. Tempest of the Red Hand clutched his sword-hilt uneasily. Mieris' old Dutch-woman seemed to have lost her interest in selling her marvellous string of onions to the little boy. Ribalta's Spanish Jesuit fingered the red cross of Santiago embroidered on his breast, and looked askance at John. John turned back many times from the library door. The new books which he had had bound in exact reproduction of a beautiful old missal of the Tempest collection, and for the arrival of which he had been eagerly waiting, remained untouched in their packing-cases. He could not look at them. Once he went into the dining-hall, unused when he was alone, and opened one of the ponderous shutters. The rich light pierced the solemn gloom, catching the silver sconces on the wall and the silver figures standing in the carved niches above the fireplace. "You will not give us up," they seemed to say; and the little cavalier turned to his lady with a shake of his head. As John closed the shutter his eyes fell on the Tempest motto on the pane, "Je le feray durant ma vie;" and it stabbed him like a knife.