ber rooms. For
here also, the large and stately library, with its nobly designed
bookcases--still empty of books--its classical panelling, and embossed
ceiling, made a setting of which the miscellaneous plunder within it was
not worthy. A man of taste would have conceived the beautiful room itself
as suffering from the disorderly uses to which it was put.

Only, in the centre, the great French table, the masterpiece of Riesener,
still stood respected and unencumbered. It held nothing but a Sevres
inkstand and pair of candle-sticks that had once belonged to Madame
Elisabeth. Mrs. Dixon dusted it every morning, with a feather brush,
generally under the eyes of Melrose. He himself regarded it with a
fanatical veneration; and one of the chief pleasures of his life was to
beguile some passing dealer into making an offer for it, and then
contemptuously show him the door.

"Doctor Undershaw, Muster Melrose."

Melrose stood to arms.

A young man entered, his step quick and decided. He was squarely built,
with spectacled gray eyes, and a slight brown moustache on an otherwise
smooth face. He looked what he was--competent, sincere, and unafraid.

Melrose did not move from his position as the doctor approached, and
barely acknowledged his bow. Behind the sarcasm of his voice the inner
fury could be felt.

"I presume, sir, you have come to offer me your apologies?"

Undershaw looked up.

"I am very sorry, Mr. Melrose, to have inconvenienced you and your
household. But really after such an accident there was nothing else to be
done. I am certain you would have done the same yourself. When I first
saw him, the poor fellow was in a dreadful state. The only thing to do
was to carry him into the nearest shelter and look after him. It was--I
assure you--a case of life and death."

Melrose made an effort to control himself, but the situation was too much
for him.

He burst out, storming:

"I wonder, sir, that you have the audacity to present yourself to me at
all. Who or what authorized you, I should like to know, to take
possession of my house, and install this young man here? What have I to
do with him? He has no claim on me--not the hundredth part of a farthing!
My servant tells me he offered to help you carry him to the farm, which
is only a quarter of a mile distant. That of course would have been the
reasonable, the gentlemanly thing to do, but just in order to insult me,
to break into the privacy of a man who, you kno