“And who were they?” I asked.

“The underwriters,” said he.

“Why, to be sure!” cried I, “I never thought of that.  What could they make of it?”

“Nothing,” replied Carthew.  “It couldn’t be explained.  They were a crowd of small dealers at Lloyd’s who took it up in syndicate; one of them has a carriage now; and people say he is a deuce of a deep fellow, and has the makings of a great financier.  Another furnished a small villa on the profits.  But they’re all hopelessly muddled; and when they meet each other, they don’t know where to look, like the Augurs.”

Dinner was no sooner at an end than he carried me across the road to Masson’s old studio.  It was strangely changed.  On the walls were tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures—­a Rousseau, a Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian.  The room was furnished with comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and an elaborate business table; spirits and soda-water (with the mark of Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler’s tray, and in one corner, behind a half-drawn curtain, I spied a camp-bed and a capacious tub.  Such a room in Barbizon astonished the beholder, like the glories of the cave of Monte Cristo.

“Now,” said he, “we are quiet.  Sit down, if you don’t mind, and tell me your story all through.”

I did as he asked, beginning with the day when Jim showed me the passage in the Daily Occidental, and winding up with the stamp album and the Chailly postmark.  It was a long business; and Carthew made it longer, for he was insatiable of details; and it had struck midnight on the old eight-day clock in the corner, before I had made an end.

“And now,” said he, “turn about:  I must tell you my side, much as I hate it.  Mine is a beastly story.  You’ll wonder how I can sleep.  I’ve told it once before, Mr. Dodd.”

“To Lady Ann?” I asked.

“As you suppose,” he answered; “and to say the truth, I had sworn never to tell it again.  Only, you seem somehow entitled to the thing; you have paid dear enough, God knows; and God knows I hope you may like it, now you’ve got it!”

With that he began his yarn.  A new day had dawned, the cocks crew in the village and the early woodmen were afoot, when he concluded.

CHAPTER XXII.  THE REMITTANCE MAN.

Singleton Carthew, the father of Norris, was heavily built and feebly vitalised, sensitive as a musician, dull as a sheep, and conscientious as a dog.  He took his position with seriousness, even with pomp; the long rooms, the silent servants, seemed in his eyes like the observances of some religion of which he was the mortal god.  He had the stupid man’s intolerance of stupidity in others; the vain man’s exquisite alarm lest it should be detected in himself.  And on both sides Norris irritated and offended him.  He thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his son returned the compliment with interest.  The history of their relation was simple; they met seldom, they quarrelled often.  To his mother, a fiery, pungent, practical woman, already disappointed in her husband and her elder son, Norris was only a fresh disappointment.