Sell! Of course I'm going to sell! What use is all this
hoarded rubbish to me? I am going to turn it into gold!"
"And what use is gold?" Aynesworth asked curiously. "You have plenty!"
"Not enough for my purpose," Wingrave declared. "We are going to
America to make more."
"It's vandalism!" Aynesworth said, "rank vandalism! The place as it is
is a picture! The furniture and the house have grown old together.
Why, you might marry!"
Wingrave scowled at the younger man across the room.
"You are a fool, Aynesworth," he said shortly. "Take down these
letters."
After dinner, Wingrave went out alone. Aynesworth followed him about
an hour later, when his work was done, and made his way towards the
Vicarage. It was barely nine o'clock, but the little house seemed
already to be in darkness. He rang twice before anybody answered him.
Then he heard slow, shuffling footsteps within, and a tall, gaunt man,
in clerical attire, and carrying a small lamp, opened the door.
Aynesworth made the usual apologies and was ushered into a bare,
gloomy-looking apartment which, from the fact of its containing a
writing table and a few books, he imagined must be the study. His host
never asked him to sit down. He was a long, unkempt-looking man with a
cold, forbidding face, and his manner was the reverse of cordial.
"I have called to see you," Aynesworth explained, "with reference to
one of your parishioners--the daughter of your late organist.
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