They passed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds’, Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned.  But Douglas was very far from unconcerned.  He had no artistic gift, and he had never felt or pretended any special interest in the pictures.  They were part of Flood, and Flood was the inseparable adjunct of the Falloden race.  When his father had first mooted the sale of them, Douglas had assented without much difficulty.  If other things went, why not they?

But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through.  A smarting sense of loss—­loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and the future—­burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his eye.  The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing.  These fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation.  “For what are you selling us?”—­they seemed to say.  “Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage—­and we must pay!  Unkind! degenerate!”

Presently, after the English drawing-rooms, and the library, with its one Romney, came the French room, with its precious Watteaus, its Latours, its two brilliant Nattiers.  And here Herr Schwarz’s coolness fairly deserted him.  He gave little shrieks of pleasure, which brought a frown to the face of his companion, who was anxious to point out that a great deal of the Watteau was certainly pupil-work, that the Latours were not altogether “convincing” and the Nattiers though extremely pretty, “superficial.”  But Herr Schwarz brushed him aside.

“Nein, nein, lieber freund!  Dat Nattier is as fine as anything at Potsdam.  Dat I must have!” And he gazed in ecstasy at the opulent shoulders, the rounded forms, and gorgeous jewelled dress of an unrivalled Madame de Pompadour, which had belonged to her brother, the Marquis de Marigny.

“You will have all or nothing, my good sir!” thought Falloden, and bided his time.

Meanwhile Miklos, perceiving that his patron was irretrievably landed and considering that his own “expert” dignity had been sufficiently saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk.  Only in the later Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch.  A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a century, was suavely pronounced—­