visible embarrassment she held out her hand.

"I am lucky to have found you at home, Mr. Melrose. Will you give me
twenty minutes' conversation on some important business?"

"Excuse me!" he said with a profound bow, and a motion of the left
hand toward the stick on which he supported himself--"or rather my
infirmities."

Victoria's hand dropped.

His glittering eyes surveyed her. Dixon approached him holding out a
telegram.

"Allow me," said Melrose, as he tore open the envelope and perused
the message. "Ah! I thought so! You were mistaken, Lady Tatham--for
another visitor--one of those foreign fellows who waste so much of
my time--coming to see a few little things of mine. Shut the door,
Dixon--the man has missed his train. Now, Lady Tatham!--you have some
business to discuss with me. Kindly step this way."

He turned toward the gallery. Victoria followed, and Dixon was left in
the hall, staring after them in a helpless astonishment.

The gallery lit by hanging lamps made a swift impression of splendid
space and colour on Lady Tatham as she passed through it in Melrose's
wake. He led the way without a word, till he reached the door of his own
room.

She passed into the panelled library which has been already described in
the course of this narrative. On this October evening, however, its
aspect was not that generally presented by Melrose's "den." Its ordinary
hugger-mugger had been cleared away--pushed back into corners and out of
sight. But on the splendid French bureau, and on various other tables and
cabinets of scarcely less beauty, there stood ranged in careful order
a wealth of glorious things. The light of a blazing fire, and of many
lamps played on some fifty or sixty dishes and vases from the great days
of Italian majolica--specimens of Gubbio, Faenza, Caffagiolo, of the
rarest and costliest quality. The room glowed and sparkled with colour.
The gold of Italian sunshine, the azure of Italian skies, the purple of
Italian grapes seemed to have been poured into it, and to have taken
shape in these lustrous ewers and plaques, in their glistering greens and
yellows, their pale opalescence, their superb orange and blue. While as a
background to the show, a couple of curtains--Venetian cut-velvet of the
seventeenth century, of faded but still gorgeous blue and rose--had been
hung over a tall screen.

"What marvellous things!" cried Victoria, throwing up her hands and
forgetting everything else for the mom