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His eyes, making the round of the room done over by Dallas with English mezzotints, Chippendale cabinets, bits of chosen blue-and-white and pleasantly shaded electric lamps came back to the old Eastlake writing-table that he had never been willing to banish, and to his first photograph of May, which still kept its place beside his inkstand.
Leofwin followed, bowing pleasantly right and left, to the intense gratification of his audience, and the trio retired. "Jolly, wasn't it?" said Leofwin. "I'm sorry, though, we couldn't have had more time. I didn't get to foreshortening at all. However, I think I probably helped them a good deal. Sometime I'd like to tell them about etching, you know, and aqua and mezzotints."
The shaded lamps, the quiet-colored walls hung with mezzotints, the pale spring flowers scattered here and there in Venice glasses and bowls of old Sevres, recalled, she hardly knew why, the apartment in which the evenings of her first marriage had been passed a wilderness of rosewood and upholstery, with a picture of a Roman peasant above the mantel-piece, and a Greek slave in "statuary marble" between the folding-doors of the back drawing-room.
But I wish I could tell where the treasure is that wily auld Logan quarrelled over with the wizard Laird of Merchistoun. Logan would not implement the contract half profits. But my wits are wool gathering. He began to wander round the room, looking at the mezzotints.
But there was a dull green hue on the walls that surely bespoke Henry Chichester's personal taste. There were bookcases, there were mezzotints, there were engravings of well-known pictures, and there were armchairs not covered with horsehair. There was also a cottage piano, severely nude. In the center of the room stood a small square table covered with a cloth and laid for two persons.
'If that does not inspire confidence, said Merton, 'I don't know what will. 'Nothing short of it will do, said Logan. 'But the mezzotints will carry weight, said Trevor, 'and a few good cloisonnes and enamelled snuff-boxes and bronzes will do no harm. So he sent in some weedings of his famous collection. Merton was reading the newspaper in the office, expecting a client.
They are all statesmanlike and presidential in attitude; and I know that if the mighty Webster's lips had language, he would take his hand out of his waistcoat front, and say to his fellow mezzotints: "Venerable men! you have come down to us from a former generation, bringing your household furniture and miscellaneous trumpery of all kinds with you."
Where he was original was not so much in his pictures but in the mezzotints, silver, china and objets d'art which he had collected for many years. "Whatever he chose, whether it was a little owl, a dog, a nigger, a bust, a Cupid in gold, bronze, china or enamel, it had to have some human meaning, some recognisable expression which made it lovable and familiar to him.
'I admire your courage and resignation, said Trevor, 'so now let us go and take rooms for the Society. They found rooms, lordly rooms, which Trevor furnished in a stately manner, hanging a selection of his mezzotints on the walls ladies of old years, after Romney, Reynolds, Hoppner, and the rest.
Miss Crofton looked round the room with eyes of desperate scrutiny. They at once fell on a large old-fashioned screen, covered with engravings, which Merton had picked up for the sake of two or three old mezzotints, barbarously pasted on to this article of furniture by some ignorant owner. 'Saved! we are saved! Hist, Julia, hither! said Miss Crofton in a stage whisper.
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