‘She will not quite forget me, I hope, now that she has this new and wealthy friend. I think I cling more tenderly to the thought of her now that I know there is no bond of kindred between us.’ ‘Believe me she loves you, and has loved you always, although you have often wounded her affectionate heart by your coldness.’ ‘That heart shall be wounded no more. She has never been ungrateful. She has never striven to trade upon my affection. She has never robbed me, or lied to me. She is worthy of trust as well as of love, and she shall have both, if she does not desert me now that fortune seems to smile upon her.’ ‘I will answer for her there. In a very few days she shall be with you again—your nurse and comforter and companion.’ ‘Yes, she has been all those, and I have tried to shut my heart against her. I will do so no longer.’ When Lucius paid his next visit upon the following evening he found the old man in a still softer mood. Tender thoughts had visited him in the deep night silence—so long for the sleeplessness of age. ‘I have been thinking a great deal about you both, you and my granddaughter,’ he said to Lucius, and have come to a determination, which is somewhat foreign to my most cherished ideas, yet which I believe to be wise.’ ‘What is that, my dear sir?’ ‘I mean to sell the greater part of my collection.’ ‘Indeed, that is quite a new idea!’ ‘Yes, but it is a resolution deliberately arrived at. True that every year will increase the value of those things, but in the mean time you and Lucille are deprived of all use of the money they would now realise. That money would procure you a West-end practice—would make a fitting home for Lucille. It would open the turnpike-gates on the great high-road to success; a road which is cruelly long for the traveller who has to push his way across ploughed fields and through thorny hedges, and over almost impassable dykes, for want of money to pay the turnpikes. Yes, Lucius, I mean to send two-thirds of my collection to Christie and Hanson’s as soon as I can revise and modify my catalogue. You might give me an hour or so every evening to help me with the task.’ ‘I will do anything you wish. But pray do not make this sacrifice on my account.’ ‘It is no sacrifice. I bought these things to sell again, only I have clung to them with a weak and foolish affection. The result of that folly has been that I have lost some of the gems of my collection, I shall set to work upon a new catalogue this evening. The task will amuse me. You need not shake your head so gravely. I promise not to overwork myself. I will take my time, and have the catalogue finished when the winter sales begin at Christie’s. I know the public humour about these things, and the things which will sell best. The residue I shall arrange in a kind of museum; and perhaps, some day, when I am in a particularly good humour, I may be induced to present this remainder to some Mechanics’ Institution at this end of London.’