"I have to, Jack, I have to. That is the truth of it. I have come to Paris to sell that Nanteuil. To realise, I suppose you would call it in the financial world. _Pro aris et focis_, old friend. I want money for the altar and the hearth. It has come to that. I cannot ask them in Farlingford for more money, for I know they have none. And the church is falling about our ears. The house wants painting. It is going the way of the church, indeed." "Ah!" said Turner, glancing at him over the bill of fare. "So you have to sell an engraving. It goes to the heart, I suppose?" Marvin laughed and rubbed his spare hands together, with an assumption of cheerfulness in which some one less stout and well-to-do than his companion might have perceived that dim minor note of pathos, which always rings somewhere in a forced laugh. "One has to face it," he replied. "_Ne cedas malis_, you know. I suddenly found it was necessary. It was forced upon me, in fact. I found that my niece was secretly helping to make both ends meet. A generous action, made doubly generous by the manner in which it was performed." "Miriam?" put in John Turner, who appeared to be absorbed in the all-important document before him. "Yes, Miriam. Do you know her? Ah! I forgot. You are her guardian and trustee. I sometimes think my memory is failing. I found her out quite by accident. It must have been going on for quite a long time. Heaven will reward her, Turner! One cannot doubt it." He absent-mindedly seized two pieces of bread from the basket offered to him by a waiter, and began to eat as if famished. "Steady, man, steady," exclaimed Turner, leaning forward with a horror-stricken face to restrain him. "Don't spoil a grand appetite on bread. Gad! I wish I could fall on my food like that. You seem to be starving." "I think I forgot to have any breakfast," said Marvin, apologetically. "I dare say you did!" was the angry retort. "You always were a bit of an ass, you know, Sep. But I have ordered a tiptop luncheon, and I'll trouble you not to wolf like that." "Well--well, I'm sorry," said the other, who, even in the far-off days at Ipswich school, had always been in the clouds, while John Turner moved essentially on the earth. "And do not sell that Nanteuil to the first bidder," went on Turner, with a glance, of which the keenness was entirely disarmed by the good-natured roundness of his huge cheeks. "I know a man who will buy it--at a good price, too. Where did you get it?" "Ah! that is a long story," replied Marvin, looking dreamily out of the window. "I bought it, years ago, at Farlingford. But it is a long story." "Then tell it, slowly. While I eat this _sole à la Normande_. I see you've nearly finished yours, and I have scarcely begun." It was a vague and disjointed enough story, as related by Septimus Marvin. And it was the story of Loo Barebone's father. As it progressed John Turner grew redder and redder in the face, while he drank glass after glass of Burgundy.