Uncle Si became a sphinx. The connoisseur took the picture in his hand, and while he examined it with grave curiosity he too became a sphinx. So tense grew the silence to June’s ear that again she was troubled by the loud beating of her heart.
At last the silence was broken by the light and charming note of Miss Babraham. “Why, surely,” she said, “that is the funny old picture I saw when I was here the other day.”
“We have cleaned it up a bit since then, madam,” said Uncle Si in a voice so toneless that June could only marvel at the perfect self-command of this arch dissembler.
Sir Arthur, it was clear, was tremendously interested. He turned the picture over and over, and used the microscope very much as M. Duponnet had done. Finally he said in a voice nearly as toneless as that of Uncle Si himself. “What do you ask for this, Mr. Gedge?”
“Not for sale, sir,” was the decisive answer.
The nod of Sir Arthur implied that it was the answer he expected. “Looks to me a fine example.” A true amateur, he could not repress a little sigh of pleasure. There was no concealing the fact that he was intrigued.
“Van Roon at his best, sir,” said S. Gedge Antiques.
“Ye-es,” said the connoisseur—in the tone of the connoisseur. “One would be rather inclined to say so. If the question is not impertinent,”—Sir Arthur fixed a steady eye upon the face of deep cunning which confronted his—“may I ask where it came from?”
The old man was prepared for the question. His answer was pat. “I can’t tell you that, sir,” he said, in a tone of mystery.
Again Sir Arthur nodded. That, too, was the answer he had expected. In the pause which followed Sir Arthur returned to a loving re-examination of the picture; and then said S. Gedge Antiques in a voice gravely and quietly confidential: “Strictly between ourselves, sir, I may say that I have just turned down an offer of five thousand guineas.”