and the rain
showers scudding over the fells. "I shall not sell them."

His mind clung obstinately to this resolve. His ambitions with regard to
money went, in fact, so far beyond anything that three thousand pounds
could satisfy, that the inducement to sell at such a price--which he knew
to be the market price--and wound thereby the deepest and sincerest of
his affections, was not really great. The little capital on which he
lived was nearly double the sum, and could be made to yield a fair income
by small and judicious speculation. He did not see that he should be much
better off for the addition to it of three thousand pounds; and on the
other hand, were the gems sold, he should have lost much that he keenly
valued--the prestige of ownership; the access which it gave him to
circles, learned or wealthy, which had been else closed to him; the
distinction attaching thereby to his otherwise obscure name in catalogues
and monographs, English or foreign. So long as he possessed the
"Mackworth gems" he was, in the eyes of the world of connoisseurs, at any
rate, a personage. Without them he was a personage nowhere. Every month,
every week, almost, he was beginning to receive requests to be allowed
to see and study them, or appeals to lend them for exhibition. In the
four months since his uncle's death, both the Louvre and the Berlin
Museum had approached him, offering to exhibit them, and hinting that the
loan might lead, should he so desire it, to a very profitable sale. If he
did anything of the kind, he was pledged of course to give the British
Museum the first chance. But he was not going to do it--he was not even
going to lend them--yet a while. To possess them, and the _kudos_ that
went with them; _not_ to sell them, for sentimental reasons, and even at
a money loss, made a poor man proud, and ministered in strange ways to
his self-respect, which went often rather hungry; gave him, in short, a
standing with himself, and with the world. All the more, that the poor
man's mind was in fact, set passionately on the conquest of wealth--real
and substantial wealth--to which the paltry sum of three thousand pounds
bore no sort of relation.

No, he would not sell them. But he braced himself to a tussle with
Melrose, for he seemed to have gathered from a number of small
indications that the fierce old collector had set his heart upon them.
And no doubt this business of the newly furnished rooms, and all the
luxuries that had be