“You used not to be a miser,” said Turner, panting on the stairs, when at last the bag was concealed in a safe place. “What matter what the value may be, so long as you like it?”
“Oh! but the value is of great importance,” answered Septimus, rather sheepishly.
“Then you have changed a good deal since you and I were at Ipswich school together. There, sit down at this table. I suppose you are hungry. I hope you are. Try and think—there’s a good fellow—and remember that they have the best cook in Paris here. Their morals ain’t of the first water, but their cook is without match. Yes, you have changed a good deal, if you think of money.”
Septimus Marvin had changed colour, at all events, in the last few minutes.
“I have to, Jack, I have to. That is the truth of it. I have come to Paris to sell that Nanteuil. To realise, I suppose you would call it in the financial world. Pro aris et focis, old friend. I want money for the altar and the hearth. It has come to that. I cannot ask them in Farlingford for more money, for I know they have none. And the church is falling about our ears. The house wants painting. It is going the way of the church, indeed.”
“Ah!” said Turner, glancing at him over the bill of fare. “So you have to sell an engraving. It goes to the heart, I suppose?”
Marvin laughed and rubbed his spare hands together, with an assumption of cheerfulness in which some one less stout and well-to-do than his companion might have perceived that dim minor note of pathos, which always rings somewhere in a forced laugh.
“One has to face it,” he replied. “Ne cedas malis, you know. I suddenly found it was necessary. It was forced upon me, in fact. I found that my niece was secretly helping to make both ends meet. A generous action, made doubly generous by the manner in which it was performed.”
“Miriam?” put in John Turner, who appeared to be absorbed in the all-important document before him.
“Yes, Miriam. Do you know her? Ah! I forgot. You are her guardian and trustee. I sometimes think my memory is failing. I found her out quite by accident. It must have been going on for quite a long time. Heaven will reward her, Turner! One cannot doubt it.”