ve. She sucked in her breath suddenly, a brief pallor chased
the roses from her cheeks, a brief confusion sat momentarily upon her.
She appeared to hesitate, then looked away and laughed uneasily.

"I don't think I quite grasp what you mean, Mr. Rickaby," she said.

"Don't you?" he made answer. "Then I will tell you--some
time--to-morrow, perhaps. But if I were you, Mrs. Bawdrey--well, no
matter. This I promise you: that dear old man shall have no ideal
shattered by me."

And, living up to that promise, he enthused over everything the old man
had in his collection when, after dinner that night, they went, in
company with Philip, to view it. But bogus things were on every hand.
Spurious porcelains, fraudulent armour, faked china were everywhere. The
loaded cabinets and the glazed cases were one long procession of faked
Dresden and bogus faience, of Egyptian enamels that had been
manufactured in Birmingham, and of sixth-century "treasures" whose
makers were still plying their trade and battening upon the ignorance of
such collectors as he.

"Now, here's a thing I am particularly proud of," said the gulled old
man, reaching into one of the cases and holding out for Cleek's
admiration an irregular disc of dull, hammered gold that had an
iridescent beetle embedded in the flat face of it. "This scarab, Mr.
Rickaby, has helped to make history, as one might say. It was once the
property of Cleopatra. I was obliged to make two trips to Egypt before I
could persuade the owner to part with it. I am always conscious of a
certain sense of awe, Mr. Rickaby, when I touch this wonderful thing. To
think, sir, to think! that this bauble once rested on the bosom of that
marvellous woman; that Mark Antony must have seen it, may have touched
it; that Ptolemy Auletes knew all about it, and that it is older, sir,
than the Christian religion itself!"

He held it out upon the flat of his palm, the better for Cleek to see
and to admire it, and signed to his son to hand the visitor a magnifying
glass.

"Wonderful, most wonderful!" observed Cleek, bending over the spurious
gem and focussing the glass upon it; not, however, for the purpose of
studying the fraud, but to examine something just noticed--something
round and red and angry-looking which marked the palm itself, at the
base of the middle finger.

"No wonder you are proud of such a prize. I think I should go off my
head with rapture if I owned an antique like that. But, pardon me, h