"Before sugar went to smash, we blazed into all sorts of extravagances here," he said, bitterly, with a glance at the deposed Sugar King's daughter. "Among others, putting electric light into this old barn. We'll have an illumination, and show you some trifles Connie and I wish to Heaven a kind-hearted burglar would relieve us of. "Of course the beastly things are heirlooms, as I suppose you know. We can't sell or pawn them, or I should have done one or the other long ago. They're insured by the trustees, who are the bane of our lives, for the estate. But a sporting sort of company has blossomed out lately, which insures against 'loss of use'--I think that's the expression. I pay the premium myself--even when I can't pay anything else!--and if the valuable contents of this place are stolen or burned, we shall benefit personally. "I don't mind you or all the world knowing we're stony broke," he went on, frankly. "And everyone _does_ know, anyhow, that we'd be in the deuce of a hole without the tourists' shillings which pour in twice a week the year round. You see, each object in the collection helps bring in those shillings; and 'loss of use' of a single one would be a real deprivation. So it's fair and above board. But thus far, I've paid my premium and got no return, these last three years. Our tourists are so disgustingly honest, or our burglars so clumsy and unenterprising, that, as you say in the States, 'there's nothing doing.'" As he talked Dick Annesley-Seton sauntered about the immense room into which they had come from the state banqueting hall, switching on more and more of the electric candle-lights set high on the green brocade walls. This was known as the "green drawing room" by the family, and the "Room of the Miniatures" by the public, who read about it in catalogues. "Come and look at our white elephants," he went on, when the room, dimly and economically lit at first, was ablaze with light; and Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith joined him eagerly. Constance followed, too, bored but resigned; and her husband paused before a tall, narrow glass cabinet standing in a recess. "See these miniatures!" he exclaimed, fretfully. "There are plenty more, but the best are in this cabinet; and there's a millionaire chap, in New York--perhaps you can guess his name, Smith?--who has offered a hundred thousand pounds for the thirty little bits of ivory in it." "I think that must have been the great Paul Van Vreck," Knight hazarded.