He found the latter busy writing letters.

“Doing your work, Aynesworth?” he remarked coldly.  “Be so good as to write to Christie’s for me, and ask them to send down a valuer to go through the pictures.”

“You are really going to sell!” Aynesworth exclaimed.

“Most certainly,” Wingrave answered.  “Heirlooms and family pictures are only so much rubbish to me.  I am the last of my line, and I doubt whether even my lawyer could discover a next of kin for my personal property.  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.”

“Indeed!” the clergyman remarked solemnly.

“I saw her today for the first time and have only just heard her story,” Aynesworth continued.  “It seems to be a very sad one.”

His listener inclined his head.

“I am, unfortunately, a poor man,” Aynesworth continued, “but I have some friends who are well off, and I could lay my hands upon a little ready money.  I should like to discuss the matter with you and see if we cannot arrange something to give her a start in life.”

The clergyman cleared his throat.

“It is quite unnecessary,” he answered.  “A connection of her father’s has come forward at the last moment, who is able to do all that is required for her.  Her future is provided for.”

Aynesworth was a little taken aback.

“I am very glad to hear it,” he declared.  “I understood that she had neither friends nor relations.”