century, was suavely pronounced--

"A Da Predis, of course, but a very nice one!" A Bellini became a
Rondinelli; and the names of a dozen obscure, and lately discovered
painters, freely applied to the Tintorets, Mantegnas and Cimas on the
walls, produced such an effect on Herr Schwarz that he sat down
open-mouthed on the central ottoman, staring first at the pictures and
then at the speaker; not knowing whether to believe or to doubt.
Falloden stood a little apart, listening, a smile on his handsome mouth.

"We should know nothing about Rondinelli," said Miklos at last,
sweetly--"but for the great Bode--"

"_Ach_, Bode!" said Herr Schwarz, nodding his head in complacent
recognition at the name of the already famous assistant-director of the
Berlin Museum.

Falloden laughed.

"Dr. Bode was here last year. He told my father he thought the Bellini
was one of the finest in existence."

Miklos changed countenance slightly.

"Bode perhaps is a trifle credulous," he said in an offended tone.

But he went back again to the Bellini and examined it closely. Falloden,
without waiting for his second thoughts, took Herr Schwarz into the
dining-room.

At the sight of the six masterpieces hanging on its walls, the Bremen
ship-owner again lost his head. What miraculous good-fortune had
brought him, ahead of all his rivals, into this still unravaged hive? He
ran from side to side,--he grew red, perspiring, inarticulate. At last
he sank down on a chair in front of the Titian, and when Miklos
approached, delicately suggesting that the picture, though certainly
fine, showed traces of one of the later pupils, possibly Molari, in
certain parts, Herr Schwarz waved him aside.

"_Nein, nein!_--Hold your tongue, my dear sir! Here must I judge for
myself."

Then looking up to Falloden who stood beside him, smiling, almost
reconciled to the vulgar, greedy little man by his collapse, he said
abruptly--

"How much, Mr. Falloden, for your father's collection?"

"You desire to buy the whole of it?" said Falloden coolly.

"I desire to buy everything that I have seen," said Herr Schwarz,
breathing quickly. "Your solicitors gave me a list of sixty-five
pictures. No, no, Miklos, go away!"--he waved his expert aside
impatiently.

"Those were the pictures on the ground floor," said Falloden. "You have
seen them all. You had better make your offer in writing, and I will
take it to my father."

He fetched pen and paper from a side-tabl