“It will make a difference of a good many thousands to us, father, if that valuation is correct,” he said shortly. “Will it? I can’t help it. I can’t go into it. I can’t keep the facts and figures in my head, Duggy. I’ve done too much of them this last ten years. My brain gives up. But you’ve got a splendid head, Duggy—wonderful for your age. I leave it to you, my son. Do the best you can.” Douglas looked at his father a moment in silence. Sir Arthur was sitting near the window, and had just turned on an electric light beside him. Douglas was struck by something strange in his father’s attitude and look—a curious irresponsibility and remoteness. The deep depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared. This mood of easy acquiescence—almost levity—was becoming permanent. Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a once splendid man—how shrunken his father was, and how grey. And he was only fifty-two. But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in the attempt to double his already great wealth by adventures all over the world, and latterly in his frantic efforts to escape the consequences of these adventures, had rapidly made an old man of him. The waste and pity—and at the same time the irreparableness of it all—sent a shock, intolerably chill and dreary, through the son’s consciousness. He was too young to bear it patiently. He hastily shook it off. “Those picture chaps are coming to-morrow,” he said, as he got up, meaning to go and dress. Sir Arthur put his hands behind his head, and didn’t reply immediately. He was looking at a picture on the panelled wall opposite, on which the lingering western glow still shone through the mullioned window on his right. It was an enchanting Romney—a young woman in a black dress holding a spaniel in her arms. The picture breathed a distinction, a dignity beyond the reach of Romney’s ordinary mood. It represented Sir Arthur’s great-grandmother, on his father’s side, a famous Irish beauty of the day. “Wonder what they’ll give me for that,” he Said quietly, pointing to it. “My father always said it was the pick. You remember the story that she—my great-grandmother—once came across Lady Hamilton in Romney’s studio, and Emma Hamilton told Romney afterwards that at last he’d found a sitter handsomer than herself. It’s a winner. You inherit her eyes, Douglas, and her colour. What’s it worth?” “Twenty thousand perhaps.” Douglas’s voice had the cock-sureness that goes with new knowledge. “I’ve been looking into some of the recent prices.” “Twenty thousand!” said Sir Arthur, musing. “And Romney got seventy-five for it, I believe—I have the receipt somewhere. I shall miss that picture. What shall I get for it? A few shabby receipts—for nothing. My creditors will get something out of her—mercifully. But as for me—I might as well have cut her into strips. She looks annoyed—as though she knew I’d thrown her away. I believe she was a vixen.”