“That came from the Wolfgang sale—­I gave six hundred for it.  It’s worth six thousand now—­you can’t find such a piece anywhere.  Ah! by George!”—­with a stifled shout—­“and that’s the Demidoff tazza!”—­as Faversham lifted up a thing lying in a half-open box that might have been ebony—­a shallow cup on a stem, with a young vine-crowned Bacchus for a handle.  Melrose took it eagerly, put up his eyeglass, and, rubbing away with his handkerchief, searched for the mark.  “There it is!—­a Caduceus and 1620.  And the signature—­see!—­’A.D.  Viana.’  There was a cup signed by Viana sold last week at Christie’s—­fetched a fabulous sum!  Every single thing in this room is worth treble and quadruple what I gave for it.  Talk of investments!  There are no such investments as works of art.  Buy ’em, I say—­lock ’em up—­and forget ’em for twenty years!”

With much labour, they had at last ranged the most important pieces on some trestle tables and in the cupboards of the room.  A number of smaller boxes and packages still remained to be looked through.  Faversham, by Melrose’s directions, had written to a London firm of dealers in antique silver, directing them to send down two of their best men to clean, mend, and catalogue.  Proper glazed cupboards, baize-lined, were to be put up along each side of the room; the room itself was to be repaired, whitened, and painted.  Faversham already foresaw the gleaming splendour of the show, when all should be done, and these marvels of a most lovely art—­these silver nymphs and fauns, these dainty sea-horses and dolphins, these temples and shrines, now holding a Hercules, now a St. Sebastian, these arabesques, garlands, festoons, running in a riot of beauty over the surface of cup and salver—­had been restored to daylight and men’s sight, after the burial of a generation.

But the value of what the house contained!  In these days of huge prices and hungry buyers, it must be simply enormous.

Faversham often found himself speculating eagerly upon it, and always with the query in the background “For whom is it all piling up?”

As they left the silver room, Melrose had made the grim remark that the contents of that room alone would make it prudent to let loose an extra couple of bloodhounds in the park at night.  Dixon’s frowning countenance as he followed in their wake showed an answering anxiety.  For he had now been made guardian of the collections; and a raw nephew of his, chosen apparently for his honesty and his speechlessness, had been put on as manservant, Mrs. Dixon had two housemaids under her, and a girl in the kitchen.  It was sometimes evident to Faversham that the agitation of these changes which had come so suddenly upon them, had aged the two old servants, just as it had tried their master.

Faversham on dismounting was told by Joseph, the new man, that Mr. Melrose would dine alone, but would be glad to see Mr. Faversham in the library after dinner.