Thus she gathered him up on her return with that dexterous turn of the wrist which exasperated her righteous brother-in-law. On the Sunday Jackson went to see the "treasures," but without Helen, who made an excuse of her mother's weekly visit. He found the widow in the stable, directing the efforts of two men servants in unpacking some cases. "Ah, it's you! How are you?" She extended a strong, flexible hand to Hart, and with the other motioned toward a marble that was slowly emerging from the packing straw. "Old copy of a Venus, the Syracuse one. It will be great in the hall, won't it?" "It's ripping!" he exclaimed warmly. "But where did you get that picture?" "You don't like it?" "Looks to be pure fake." "And Simonetti swore he knew the very room where it's hung for over a hundred years." "Oh, he probably put it there himself!" "Come into the house and see the other things. I have some splendid chairs." For an hour they examined the articles she had bought, and the architect was sufficiently approving to satisfy Mrs. Phillips. Neither one had a pure, reticent taste. Both were of the modern barbarian type that admires hungrily and ravishes greedily from the treasure house of the Old World what it can get, what is left to get, piling the spoil helter-skelter into an up-to-date American house. Mediæval, Renaissance, Italian, French, Flemish--it was all one! Between them they would turn Forest Manor into one of those bizarre, corrupt, baroque museums that our lavish plunderers love,--electric-lighted and telephoned, with gilded marble fireplaces, massive bronze candelabra, Persian rugs, Gothic choir stalls, French bronzes--a house of barbarian spoil! A servant brought in a tray of liquors and cigarettes; they sat in the midst of pictures and stuffs, and sipped and smoked. "Now," Mrs. Phillips announced briskly, "I want to hear all about you!" "It's only the old story,--more jobs and more strikes,--the chase for the nimble dollar," he answered lightly. "You have to run faster for it all the time." "But you are making money?" she questioned directly. "I'm spending it." He found it not difficult to tell her the state of his case. She nodded comprehendingly, while he let her see that his situation, after two years of hard work, was not altogether as prosperous as it appeared on the surface. Payments on buildings under construction were delayed on account of the strikes; office expenses crept upward; and personal expenses mounted too. And there was that constant pressure in business--the fear of a cessation in orders. "We may have to move back to town after all. That Loring place is pretty large to swing, and in town you can be poor in obscurity." "Nonsense! You must not go back. People will know then that you haven't money. You are going to get bigger things to do when the strikes are over. And you are so young. My! not thirty-five."