He wondered to whom the house itself would ultimately fall. He had received several offers for it, but none of them had reached the reserve figure of thirty thousand. The dealers, of course, would make a ring for the furniture, the tapestries, and the pictures, and would doubtless resell them to its new owner of the house at an outrageous profit. Nutley had his eye on a Brazilian as a very probable purchaser; not only had he called at the estate office himself for all possible particulars, but on a second occasion he had brought his son and his daughter with him, exotic birds brilliantly descending upon the country solicitor’s office. They had come in a white Rolls-Royce, which had immediately compelled Nutley’s disapproving respect; it had a negro chauffeur on the box, the silver statuette of a nymph with streaming hair on the bonnet, and a spray of orchids in a silver and crystal vase inside. The Brazilian himself was an unpretentious cattle magnate, with a quick, clipped manner, and a wrinkled face the colour of a coffee-bean; he might be the purveyor of dollars, but he wasn’t the showy one; the ostentation of the family had passed into the children. These were in their early twenties, spoilt and fretful; the tyrants of their widowed father, who listened to all their remarks with an indulgent smile. Nutley, who had never in the whole of his life seen anything like them, tried to make himself believe that he couldn’t decide which was the more offensive, but, secretly, he was much impressed. “Plenty of bounce, anyway,” he reflected, observing the son, his pearl-grey suit over admirably waisted stays, his black hair swept back from his brow, and shining like the flanks of a wet seal, his lean hands weighted with fat platinum rings, his walk that slightly swayed, as though the syncopated rhythm of the plantations had passed for ever into his blood; and, observing him, the strangest shadow of envy passed across the shabby little solicitor in the presence of such lackadaisical youth.... The daughter, more languid and more subtly insolent, so plump that she seemed everywhere cushioned: her tiny hands had no knuckles, but only dimples, and everything about her was round, from the single pearls on her fingers to the toecaps of her patent leather shoes. Clearly the father had offered Blackboys to the pair as an additional toy. They were as taken with it as their deliberately unenthusiastic manner would permit them to betray; and Nutley guessed that sufficient sulks on the part of the daughter would quickly induce the widower to increase his offer of twenty-five thousand by the necessary five. Up to the present he had held firm, a business convention which Nutley was ready tacitly to accept. He had reported the visit to Chase, but Chase (the unaccountable) hadn’t taken much interest. Since then he had seen the brother and sister several times wandering over the house and garden, and this he took to be a promising sign. The father he hadn’t seen