It was hardly a year afterward that, coming back from a long tour in India, I picked up a London paper and read the amazing headline: “Mr. Humphrey Neave buys the Daunt collection”... I rubbed my eyes and read again. Yes, it could only be our old friend Humphrey. “An American living in Rome ... one of our most discerning collectors”; there was no mistaking the description. I clapped on my hat and bolted out to see the first dealer I could find; and there I had the incredible details. Neave had come into a fortune--two or three million dollars, amassed by an uncle who had a corset-factory, and who had attained wealth as the creator of the Mystic Super-straight. (Corset-factory sounds odd, by the way, doesn’t it? One had fancied that the corset was a personal, a highly specialized garment, more or less shaped on the form it was to modify; but, after all, the Tanagras were all made from two or three moulds--and so, I suppose, are the ladies who wear the Mystic Super-straight.) The uncle had a son, and Neave had never dreamed of seeing a penny of the money; but the son died suddenly, and the father followed, leaving a codicil that gave everything to our friend. Humphrey had to go out to “realize” on the corset-factory; and his description of _that_ ... Well, he came back with his money in his pocket, and the day he landed old Daunt went to smash. It all fitted in like a Chinese puzzle. I believe Neave drove straight from Euston to Daunt House: at any rate, within two months the collection was his, and at a price that made the trade sit up. Trust old Daunt for that! I was in Rome the following spring, and you’d better believe I looked him up. A big porter glared at me from the door of the Palazzo Neave: I had almost to produce my passport to get in. But that wasn’t Neave’s fault--the poor fellow was so beset by people clamouring to see his collection that he had to barricade himself, literally. When I had mounted the state _Scalone_, and come on him, at the end of half a dozen echoing saloons, in the farthest, smallest _reduit_ of the vast suite, I received the same welcome that he used to give us in his little den over the wine shop. “Well--so you’ve got her?” I said. For I’d caught sight of the Diana in passing, against the bluish blur of an old _verdure_--just the background for her poised loveliness. Only I rather wondered why she wasn’t in the room where he sat. He smiled. “Yes, I’ve got her,” he returned, more calmly than I had expected. “And all the rest of the loot?” “Yes. I had to buy the lump.” “Had to? But you wanted to, didn’t you? You used to say it was your idea of heaven--to stretch out your hand and have a great ripe sphere of beauty drop into it. I’m quoting your own words, by the way.”