y voice rang out clear and painfully
distinct:

"Yes, I did! And I say it again. Bribery! Collusion! That's what it
amounts to. You want to square me!"

"Nothing of the kind, Godfrey," was the reply in a lower tone; but at
this point I coughed emphatically and moved a chair, and the voices
subsided once more into an indistinct murmur.

To distract my attention from my unseen neighbours I glanced curiously
about the room and speculated upon the personalities of its occupants. A
very curious room it was, with its pathetic suggestion of decayed
splendour and old-world dignity: a room full of interest and character
and of contrasts and perplexing contradictions. For the most part it
spoke of unmistakable though decent poverty. It was nearly bare of
furniture, and what little there was was of the cheapest--a small
kitchen table and three Windsor chairs (two of them with arms); a
threadbare string carpet on the floor, and a cheap cotton cloth on the
table; these, with a set of bookshelves, frankly constructed of grocer's
boxes, formed the entire suite. And yet, despite its poverty, the place
exhaled an air of homely if rather ascetic comfort, and the taste was
irreproachable. The quiet russet of the tablecloth struck a pleasant
harmony with the subdued bluish green of the worn carpet; the Windsor
chairs and the legs of the table had been carefully denuded of their
glaring varnish and stained a sober brown; and the austerity of the
whole was relieved by a ginger-jar filled with fresh-cut flowers and set
in the middle of the table.

But the contrasts of which I have spoken were most singular and
puzzling. There were the bookshelves, for instance, home-made and
stained at the cost of a few pence, but filled with recent and costly
works on archaeology and ancient art. There were the objects on the
mantelpiece: a facsimile in bronze--not bronzed plaster--of the
beautiful head of Hypnos and a pair of fine Ushabti figures. There were
the decorations of the walls, a number of etchings--signed proofs, every
one of them--of Oriental subjects, and a splendid facsimile reproduction
of an Egyptian papyrus. It was incongruous in the extreme, this mingling
of costly refinements with the barest and shabbiest necessaries of life,
of fastidious culture with manifest poverty. I could make nothing of it.
What manner of man, I wondered, was this new patient of mine? Was he a
miser, hiding himself and his wealth in this obscure court? An eccen