st he had
received for many years. If he once allowed a correspondence to grow
up--with that individual--on the subject of money, there would be no end
to it; it would spread and spread, till his freedom was once more
endangered. He did not intend that persons, who had been once banished
from his life, should reenter it--on any pretext. Netta had behaved to
him like a thief and a criminal, and with the mother went the child. They
were nothing to him, and never should be anything. If she was in trouble,
let her go to her own people.

He took out the letter, and dropped it into the midst of the burning logs
before him. Then he turned to a heap of sale catalogues lying near him,
and after going through them, he rose, and as though drawn to it by a
magnetic power, he went to the Riesener table, and unlocked the drawer
which held the gems.

Bringing them back to the fireside he watched the play of the flames on
their shining surfaces, delighting greedily in their beauty; in the long
history attaching to each one of them, every detail of which he knew; in
the sense of their uniqueness. Nothing like them of their kind, anywhere;
and there they were in his hand, after these years of fruitless coveting.
He had often made Mackworth offers for them; and Mackworth had laughed at
him.

Well, he had bid high enough this time, not for the gems themselves, but
for the chance of some day persuading their owner to entertain the notion
of selling them. It pleased him to guess at what had been probably
Faversham's secret expectation that morning of a proposal for them; and
to think that he had baffled it.

He might, of course, have made some quite preposterous offer which would
have forced the young man's hand. But that might have meant, probably
would have meant, the prompt departure of the enriched Faversham. But he
wanted both Faversham and the gems; as much as possible--that is, for his
money. The thought of returning to his former solitariness was rapidly
becoming intolerable to him. Meanwhile the adorable things were still
under his roof; and with a mad pleasure he relocked the drawer.

* * * * *

Faversham spent the rest of the morning in cogitations that may be easily
imagined. He certainly attributed some share in the extraordinary
proposal that had been made to him, to his possession of the gems, and to
Melrose's desire to beguile them from him. But what then? Sufficient for
the day! He would