Winifred was silenced. She inclined more and more to that peace and
quietness of which Montague Dartie had deprived her in her youth. And,
since pictures always depressed her, she soon went down again.

Soames passed into the corner where, side by side, hung his real Goya
and the copy of the fresco "La Vendimia." His acquisition of the real
Goya rather beautifully illustrated the cobweb of vested interests and
passions which mesh the bright-winged fly of human life. The real
Goya's noble owner's ancestor had come into possession of it during
some Spanish war--it was in a word loot. The noble owner had remained
in ignorance of its value until in the nineties an enterprising critic
discovered that a Spanish painter named Goya was a genius. It was only
a fair Goya, but almost unique in England, and the noble owner became a
marked man. Having many possessions and that aristocratic culture
which, independent of mere sensuous enjoyment, is founded on the sounder
principle that one must know everything and be fearfully interested in
life, he had fully intended to keep an article which contributed to his
reputation while he was alive, and to leave it to the nation after
he was dead. Fortunately for Soames, the House of Lords was violently
attacked in 1909, and the noble owner became alarmed and angry. 'If,'
he said to himself, 'they think they can have it both ways they are very
much mistaken. So long as they leave me in quiet enjoyment the nation
can have some of my pictures at my death. But if the nation is going to
bait me, and rob me like this, I'm damned if I won't sell the lot. They
can't have my private property and my public spirit-both.' He brooded
in this fashion for several months till one morning, after reading the
speech of a certain statesman, he telegraphed to his agent to come
down and bring Bodkin. On going over the collection Bodkin, than whose
opinion on market values none was more sought, pronounced that with a