Soames said dryly:  “Anything may happen.  The State might take the lot; they’re capable of anything in these days.”

“And carry five,” said Gradman to himself.  “I forgot—­Mr. Timothy’s in Consols; we shan’t get more than two per cent. with this income tax.  To be on the safe side, say eight millions.  Still, that’s a pretty penny.”

Soames rose and handed him the Will.  “You’re going into the City.  Take care of that, and do what’s necessary.  Advertise; but there are no debts.  When’s the sale?”

“Tuesday week,” said Gradman.  “Life or lives in bein’ and twenty-one years afterward—­it’s a long way off.  But I’m glad he’s left it in the family....”

The sale—­not at Jobson’s, in view of the Victorian nature of the effects—­was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them their heart’s desires.  Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie, and Eustace had come in his car.  The miniatures, Barbizons, and J. R. drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable value were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared to have mementoes.  These were the only restrictions upon bidding characterised by an almost tragic languor.  Not one piece of furniture, no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste.  The humming birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where they had not hummed for sixty years.  It was painful to Soames to see the chairs his aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had practically never played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at, the china they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth-rug which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain and died in—­sold to little dealers, and the housewives of Fulham.  And yet—­what could one do?  Buy them and stick them in a lumber-room?  No; they had to go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be worn out.  But when they put up Aunt Ann’s sofa and were going to knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried out, suddenly:  “Five pounds!” The sensation was considerable, and the sofa his.

When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October sunshine feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board “To Let” was up, indeed.  Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no comfort in Annette; no Timothy’s on the Bayswater Road.  In the irritable desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery.  That chap Jolyon’s watercolours were on view there.  He went in to look down his nose at them—­it might give him some faint satisfaction.  The news had trickled through from June to Val’s wife, from her to Val, from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the house—­the fatal house at Robin Hill—­was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out in British Columbia,