Melrose looked at him oddly, seemed about to speak—­then muttered something hardly intelligible, ceased abruptly, and departed.

* * * * *

The master of the Tower went slowly to his library through the splendid gallery, where Mrs. Dixon and the new housemaid were timidly dusting.  But he took no notice of them.  He went into his own room, locked his door, and having lit his own fire, he settled down to smoke and ruminate.  He was exhausted, and his seventy years asserted themselves.  The radical alteration in his habits and outlook which the preceding six weeks had produced, the excitement of unpacking the treasures now displayed in the gallery, the constant thinkings and plannings connected with Faversham and the future, and, lastly, the interview just concluded, had tried his strength.  Certain symptoms—­symptoms of old age—­annoyed him though he would not admit it.  No doubt some change was wanted.  He must smoke less—­travel less—­give himself more variety and more amusement.  Well, if Faversham consented, he should at least have bought for himself a companionship that was agreeable to him, and relief from a number of routine occupations which he detested.

Suddenly—­a child’s voice—­a child’s shrill voice, ringing through the gallery—­followed by scufflings and hushings, on the part of an older person—­then a wail—­and silence.  Melrose had risen to his feet with an exclamation.  Some peculiar quality in the voice—­some passionate, thrilling quality—­had produced for the moment an extraordinary illusion.

He recovered himself in a moment.  It was of course the child of the upholstress who had been working in the house for a week or so.  He remembered to have noticed the little girl.  But the sound had inevitably suggested thoughts he had no wish to entertain.  He had a letter in his pocket at that moment which he did not mean to answer—­the first he had received for many years.  If he once allowed a correspondence to grow up—­with that individual—­on the subject of money, there would be no end to it; it would spread and spread, till his freedom was once more endangered.  He did not intend that persons, who had been once banished from his life, should reenter it—­on any pretext.  Netta had behaved to him like a thief and a criminal, and with the mother went the child.  They were nothing to him, and never should be anything.  If she was in trouble, let her go to her own people.

He took out the letter, and dropped it into the midst of the burning logs before him.  Then he turned to a heap of sale catalogues lying near him, and after going through them, he rose, and as though drawn to it by a magnetic power, he went to the Riesener table, and unlocked the drawer which held the gems.

Bringing them back to the fireside he watched the play of the flames on their shining surfaces, delighting greedily in their beauty; in the long history attaching to each one of them, every detail of which he knew; in the sense of their uniqueness.  Nothing like them of their kind, anywhere; and there they were in his hand, after these years of fruitless coveting.  He had often made Mackworth offers for them; and Mackworth had laughed at him.