“Have you heard what I told you about those priceless vases in the South Kensington?”

“I am most anxious to see them, I assure you.”

“My blue-and-white,” Madame Potecki continued, seriously, “I am afraid is not always of the best.  There are plenty of good pieces, it is true; but they are not the finest feature of the collection.  Oh! the Benares brocades—­I had forgotten them.  Ah, my dear, these will make you open your eyes!”

“But don’t you get bewildered, madame, with having to think of so many possessions?” said Natalie, respectfully.

“No,” said the other, in a matter-of-fact way; “I take them one by one.  I pay a morning call here, a morning call there, when I have no appointments, just to see that everything is going on well.”

Presently she said,

“Ah, well, my dear, we are poor weak creatures.  Here and there, in my wanderings I have met things that I almost coveted; but see what an impossible, monstrous collection they would make!  Let me think, now.  The Raphael at Dresden; two Titian portraits in the Louvre; the Venus of Milo—­not the Medici one at all; I would not take it; I swear I would not accept it, that trivial little creature with the yellow skin!”

“My dear friend, the heavens will fall on you!” her companion exclaimed.

“Wait a moment,” said the little music-mistress, reflectively.  “I have not completed my collection.  There is a Holy Family of Botticelli’s—­I forget where I saw it.  And the bust of the Empress Messalina in the Uffizi:  did you ever notice it, Natalie?”

“No.”

“Do not forget it when you are in Florence again.  You won’t believe any of the stories about her when you see the beautiful refined face; only don’t forget to remark how flat the top of her head is.  Well, where are we, my dear?  The bronze head of the goddess in the Castellani collection:  I would have that; and the fighting Temeraire.  Will these do?  But then, my dear, even if one had all these things, see what a monstrous collection they would make.  What should I do with them in my lodgings, even if I had room?  No; I must be content with what I have.”

By this time they had got down into South Kensington and were drawing near one of Madame Potecki’s great treasure houses.

“Then, you see, my dear Natalie,” she continued, “my ownership of these beautiful things we are going to see is not selfish.  It can be multiplied indefinitely.  You may have it too; any one may have it, and all without the least anxiety!”

“That is very pleasant also,” said the girl, who was paying less heed now.  The forced cheerfulness that had marked her manner at starting had in great measure left her.  Her look was absent; she blindly followed her guide through the little wicket, and into the hushed large hall.

The silence was grateful to her; there was scarcely any one in the place.  While Madame Potecki busied herself with some catalogue or other, the girl turned aside into a recess, to look at a cast of the effigy on the tomb of Queen Eleanor of Castile.  A tombstone stills the air around it.  Even this gilt plaster figure was impressive; it had the repose of the dead.