"I don't think you'll find them altogether trivial."
He recalled the earlier allusion to old masters. But he had had experience with the bucolic conception of such things.
"Who are the artists?" he asked in his most matter-of-fact tone.
"I'm not sure," she said, after a moment's hesitation. "At least, not sure of all of them."
"But the ones you know?" he prompted. And again a period of silence reigned in the shadowy room before she spoke.
"There's a Decamps and two Corots and a Holbein," she said very quietly. "There is also a Constable—no, two Constables—and one Boldini, and what we were once led to believe was a copy of Correggio, though our late rector, who was in both Rome and Florence once, remained strongly persuaded that it was an original."
Conkling, as he sat staring at the faded face in the fading light, lost a little of his own color. It took his breath away. It was too much to believe.
