. There was a
Napoleonic corner--a Meissonier on one side and a Detaille on the other.
In a stationary cabinet there were a pair of stirrups, a riding crop, a
book on artillery tactics, a pair of slippers beaded with seed pearls, and
a buckle studded with sapphires.

"What are those?" she asked, attracted.

"They belonged to the Emperor and his first Empress."

"Napoleon?"

"The Corsican. Next to the masters, I've a passion for things genuinely
Napoleonic. The hussar is by Meissonier and the skirmish by Detaille."

"How much is this corner worth?"

"I can't say, except that I would not part with those objects for a
hundred thousand; and there are friends of mine who would pay half that
sum for them--behind my back. This is a Da Vinci."

Half an hour passed. Jane honestly tried to be thrilled by the splendour
of the names she heard, but her eye was always travelling back toward the
slippers and the buckle. The Empress Josephine! Romance and gallantry in
the old, old days!

"The painting in your cabin is by Holbein. It cost me sixteen thousand.
Now let us go out and look at the rug. That is the apple of my eye. It is
the second finest example of the animal rug in the world. A sheet of pure
gold, half an inch thick, covering the rug from end to end, would not
equal its worth."

Jane admired the rug, but she would have preferred the gold. Her sense of
the beautiful was alive, but there was always in her mind the genteel
poverty of the past. She was beginning to understand. To go in quest of
the beautiful required an unlimited purse and an endless leisure; and she
would have never the one nor the other.

"How much gold would that be?" she inquired, naively.

"Nearly eighty thousand. Have you kept in mind the sums I have given
you?"

"Yes. Let me see--good heavens, a quarter of a million! But why do you
carry them about like this?"

"Because I'm something of a rogue myself. I could not enjoy the rug and
the paintings except on board. The French, the Italian, and the Spanish
governments could confiscate every solitary painting except the Meissonier
and the Detaille, for the simple reason that they were stolen. Oh, I did
not steal them myself; I merely purchased them with one eye shut. If I
hadn't bought them they would have gone to some other collector. Do you
get a glimmer of the truth now?"

"The truth?"--perplexedly.

"Yes--where Cunningham will get his pearls?"--bitterly.

"Oh!"

"And I could not tou