Sir Peter nodded. "Fifty-two. A choice year."

"I was growing a great lad, then," commented Mr. Rowlandson. "You have the advantage of me by several years, I fancy."

"I shall not see sixty again," said Sir Peter; after a pause he added,--"I hope your trade is good; but everything is going to the devil, and I a.s.sume the bookselling business goes with the rest. The radicals are in the saddle--and driving headlong to destruction."

"I remember an aunt of mine, many years ago, who had fears for her country," was Mr. Rowlandson's rejoinder. "She stopped taking in the county paper, and depended on 'The Religious Weekly' for news, the rest of her days. She said there were no signs of change in that. Old Aunt Deborah! My me! But the bookselling trade does very well, thank you, Sir Peter. The magazines are the only r.e.t.a.r.ding influence."

Mr. Rowlandson moved one of the parcels on the table a little nearer to him and slyly loosened the string.

"Occasionally I do a bit of business a little out of my line," he continued. "This morning, for example, I made a deal that promises a profit--a very pretty profit. Now that I come to think, it might be of interest to you to hear of it. It was a deal in old valentines? I recall you once bought a collection."

Sir Peter started.

"These old valentines were brought to the shop by a young woman in reduced circ.u.mstances She did not want to sell them, I fancy. She seemed rather fond of them." Mr. Rowlandson sipped his sherry; he lingered over it. "Yes, I should say she was rather fond of them. Well,--that isn't my affair. I advanced some money on them? just enough to tide over the present difficulty. Of course, she and her young husband----"

Sir Peter looked up quickly; he had been gazing into the fire. Mr.

Rowlandson's face was placid.

"She and her young husband will want more money," he continued. "Yes, they will certainly want more money. And when the proper time comes----" He hesitated as though at a loss for the right words. "Down I come on them--pounce! and sell out the valentines--and take my profit."

Mr. Rowlandson took another sip of sherry with evident enjoyment.

Their eyes met. Sir Peter scowled.

"She--was--my niece?" he inquired.

"Well, bless my soul!" pondered Mr. Rowlandson, as though the thought struck him for the first time. "They may have been the same valentines you bought at that sale--whose was it?--so many years ago. Of course, they may have been. I have a few of them with me--" He reached for the parcel with the loosened string.

"You know they are the same," said Sir Peter savagely. "Let this farce end at once. You should be ashamed, Rowlandson, to seek your shabby profit in the helplessness of a misguided child, ignorant of the world--and its hard, rough usage. I am surprised that you would do it--but that you should tell of it--even boast of it, amazes me.

However--trade blunts a certain delicacy of feeling that--"

Sir Peter gave the bookseller a sharp look. Then he added,--

"I see your purpose in coming here now. You calculated shrewdly.

Well--you were right. I will pay you the sum advanced to her."

Whatever emotion Mr. Rowlandson experienced he concealed.

Sir Peter opened his check-book again, and dipped his pen.

"How much did you say?" he asked.

"The amount advanced was fifty pounds," said Mr. Rowlandson mildly.

"Fifty pounds!" exclaimed Sir Peter.

Mr. Rowlandson held his wine-gla.s.s to the light again, and looked through it with half-closed eyes.

"Fifty pounds," he quietly repeated, "and took her note, with interest at five per cent. I could have made it six as well as not, she wanted the money so badly."

Sir Peter turned his back on the bookseller the pen busied itself with the check. A moment later it was offered to him.

"Thank you, Sir Peter. My interest in this transaction is not for sale."

Mr. Rowlandson spoke in a low tone, firmly.

"But I say my niece shall not be indebted to you! Not one penny!"

Sir Peter's fist came down on one of the parcels lying on the table.

There was a crash of broken gla.s.s. Mr. Rowlandson's eyes twinkled merrily.

"That is the Charterhouse print," said he. "My customer will be disappointed. It was promised for this evening."

The trivial incident cooled Sir Peter's wrath.

"I insist on your taking the check, Rowlandson" he said sternly. "You will understand it is an impossible situation. My niece is not under the necessity of seeking aid from strangers. She knows that all I have is hers. That I would----" He stopped abruptly.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Rowlandson, leaning forward. "Let us talk about her--and her young poet. What an upstanding, fine, frank lad he appears to be. Do you think he has great talent?"

"I do not know that he has any talent whatever!" replied Sir Peter angrily. "I know he stole my niece from me? the puppy!"

"Well, well," said Mr. Rowlandson gently. "That was wrong. Wrong, indeed. And I suppose you had showed him clearly that by proceeding openly he had a fair field to win her, too?"

Sir Peter set his teeth. The old bookseller repeated his question:--

"You did not discourage the lad, I am sure? He knew he had a chance, eh?"

"I must decline to discuss that with you, Rowlandson."

"Chut! Chut!" murmured Mr. Rowlandson. "We are just two old fellows jogging toward the grave together, even if you are a knight, and I am a bookseller. Come, now, Sir Peter, tell me all about it. It will do you good. I will wager you have been eating your heart out, for a month, in this great, lonely house, with no one to whom you could talk of your sorrow. Come, come, Sir Peter." Mr. Rowlandson rose. "Do not twenty-five years of honest dealing with you ent.i.tle me to a little of your confidence?"

Sir Peter stood silently by the fireplace, his back turned to the old bookseller. Mr. Rowlandson set his empty wine-gla.s.s carefully on the table, and then drew from their paper the valentines Phyllis had left at the shop.

"I read an essay of Mr. Benson's, last night,--and one bit comes to me now," he said. "The essay opens with an old French proverb, 'To make one's self beloved is the best way to be useful.' Then the essayist goes on to say that this is one of the deep sayings which young men, and even young women, ignore; which middle-aged folk hear with a certain troubled surprise? and which old people discover to be true, and think, with a sad regret, of opportunities missed, and of years devoted, how unprofitably, to other kinds of usefulness. We expect, like Joseph in his dreams, says Mr. Benson, that the sun and moon and the eleven stars, to say nothing of the sheaves, will make obeisance to us. And then, as we grow older the visions fade. The eleven stars seem unaware of our existence and we are content if, in a quiet corner, a single sheaf gives us a nod of recognition."

Mr. Rowlandson smiled pleasantly, and patted the old valentines under his hand.

"And then," he continued, "the essayist says, we make further discoveries that give us pain; that when we have seemed to ourselves most impressive, we have only been pretentious; that riches are only a talisman against poverty; that influence comes mostly to people who do not pursue it, and do not even know they possess it; and that the real rewards of life have fallen to simple-minded and unselfish people who have not sought them. I fear I have not quoted the essay quite accurately. I had a wonderful memory, once. It fails--it fails. But it is very prettily put, in the book, and of course it is all quite true."

Mr. Rowlandson smiled again, at Sir Peter's back. He turned the valentines over, one at a time:--

"My me! My me!" he mused, aloud. "Think of all the old loves, of bygone years, these represent. School-boy and schoolgirl loves--most of them, probably; springtime loves. The perfume will always linger in these poor, faded leaves. You never married, Sir Peter, did you? Nor I; nor I.

My me! My me! I remember a girl--when I was twenty; in Hertfordshire--my old home. Bessy was her name. She had the softest brown hair--in a thick braid. She wore pink-checked gingham. My me! She married a farrier, fifty years ago."

Mr. Rowlandson bent over one of the valentines, to read the verses, finely engraved, beneath a spray of blue forget-me-nots:--

"Wilt thou be mine?

Dear love, reply, Sweetly consent, or else deny.

Whisper softly; none shall know.

Wilt thou be mine?