After dinner the Master, his mortar-board cap on his head, opened the drawing-room door and invited them to come across to the College Library to see some bronzes and a few other things that Mr. Davison had temporarily deposited there. He had divined that Maxwell Davison would be willing to sell, and in his guileful soul the little Master may have had schemes of persuading his wealthy friend Milwood to purchase any bronzes that might be of value to the College or the University. Of the ladies, only Mildred and Miss Moore, the archaeologist, braved the chill of the mediaeval Library to inspect the collection. Davison professed to no artistic or antiquarian knowledge of the bronzes. They had come to him in the way of trade and had all been dug up in Asia Minor--no, not all, for one he had picked up in England. Nevertheless he had succeeded in getting a pretty clear notion of the relative value of his bronzes--the Oriental curios with them it was his business to understand. He could not help observing the sure instinct with which Mrs. Stewart selected what was best among all these different objects. She had the _flair_ of the born collector. The learned archaeologists present leaned over the collection discussing and disputing, and took no notice of her remarks as she rapidly handled each article. But Davison did, and when at length she took up a small figure of Augustus--the bronze that had not come from Asia Minor--and looked at it with a peculiar doubtful intentness, he began to feel uncomfortable. "Anything wrong with that?" he asked, in spite of himself. She laughed nervously. "Oh, Mr. Davison, please ask some one who knows! I don't. Only I--I seem to have seen something like it before, that's all." Sanderson, roaming around the professed archaeologists, took the bronze from her hands. "I'll tell you where you've seen it, Mrs. Stewart. It's engraved in Egerton's _Private Collections of Great Britain_. I picked that up the other day--first edition, 1818. I dare say the book's here. We'll see." Sanderson took a candle and went glimmering away down the long, dark room. "What can this be?" asked Mildred, taking up what looked like a glass ball. "Please stand over here and look into it for five minutes," returned Davison, evasively. "Perhaps you'll see what it is then." He somehow wanted to get rid of Mildred's appraisal of his goods. "Mr. Davison, your glass ball has gone quite cloudy!" she exclaimed, in a minute or two. "That's all right. Go on looking and you'll see something more," he returned. Presently she said: "It's so curious. I see the whole room reflected in the glass now, but it's much lighter than it really is, and the windows seem larger. It all looks so different. There is some one down there in white." Sanderson came up the room carrying a large quarto, open. "Here's your bronze, right enough," he said, putting the book down on the table. "It's under the heading, _Hammerton Collection_."