ters?" she pursued, with her pale eyes fixed on his face.
"Oh, they're all pretty much evaluated," he told her, "provided they are old masters."
She was about to speak again, but an interruption came in the form of a slow and distant clangor. It was a dinner gong, Conkling suspected. There was, however, no note of blitheness in its summons. It fell on his ears as depressingly mournful as a bell-buoy tolling over a fog-bound reef. It made him think of bells that he had heard in the second act of Macbeth.
"We are about to take tea," announced Georgina Keswick with the utmost solemnity, "and I trust you will give us the honor of your company."
Conkling was tempted to smile at this ponderous unbending. But he became sober again as he caught sight of a slender young figure in organdie passing from one side of the old manor to the other.
"That's very kind of you," he said, with his gaze following the girl in organdie as
