women in the world whose names aren't Powell. However, I'm making a poor host of myself. Come with me. I'd like to show you my house—ours, you understand—ours—if you'll make it so.”
He stood to his feet, admirably erect and dignified, unmistakably a gentleman of a fine old day, and, when his nephew did likewise, linked his arm affectionately through the younger man's and impelled him toward the entrance, thrusting aside the tapestries with a graceful gesture of his firm old hand.
“I bought this palace,” he said, with evident pride of possession, “because it has a history. Because it once belonged to gentlemen, and there was a retired Polish pawn-broker from Chicago who was after it. It didn't seem right that a man who had made his money by usuring the unlucky should ever live here; that walls which had sheltered those with noble instincts; that had heard the tragedies of the worthy; that had known the love secrets of a hundred generations of youth; that had known timid brides, and mothers of first-born should fall into such degradation.”
“I thought you were neither romantic nor sentimental, Uncle Lem,” Jimmy remarked, with a grin.
“I'm not! I hate such nonsense! I bought this place because—well, because I wanted to settle down, and this place is so well arranged. That is—I got it arranged to suit myself by having some new plumbing, and—um-m-mh!—a few alterations such as having a partition knocked out here and there and By the way! Look at those frescoes up there. Those on the right were done by Pietro Liberi, and those on the left by Andrea Vicentino. Garibaldi lived in this palace and is said to have stood for hours admiring that fresco and—I don't blame him! It's worthy of any man's admiration. Now this is the big salon. Noble room, isn't it? The Doge Luigi Contarini who ruled from 1676 to 1684 owned this palace and lived here. Before he became a doge, of course. He used to hold a sort of court in this room. Think of what it must have looked like—two or three hundred guests at a reception and—all that! I'm afraid I've rather outraged its original purpose by these cabinets. I've made it a sort of museum with 'em. Can't help collecting things. Sometimes I come here and pass hours admiring them, myself.”
As if lost in thought and that realm of romance and sentiment which he so strenuously decried, and denied, he halted and his eyes swept over the magnificent old hall whose splendors had been but faintly dimmed and harmonized by the invisible touch of time. Sunset had fallen outside and he, standing there elegant of figure, and refined of face, seemed a part of the sunset of a life elegant and refined, in surroundings worthy of such a man. The light was tender as it passed through the stained-glass windows of the enormously high and vaulted dome, lingered on the heavy Venetian cornices and dull golds of their embellishment, and gently caressed the paintings wrought by long-dead masters.
Jimmy's awed inspection was disturbed by his next words.
“Come over here,” he said. “Here's something that will interest you because you are a Harnway. This cabinet here—first at the side.” He smiled and then chuckled audibly as he conducted Jimmy across the tiled floor while the resonance of the empty spaces and vaulted reception hall magnified and echoed the sounds of their progress. He halted in front of a cabinet, fumbled in his pocket for a bunch of keys, found them, adjusted glasses to the bridge of his high, thin nose and bending forward found the lock. He opened the door, reached within, and selected a small box of dull gold whose colors seemed lost in the lights and shadows that fell upon its quaint craftsmanship.
“That,” he said, as he handed it to Jimmy, “is the Crusader's Casket. I brought it back here. You know what it means? What it has cost? The lives of God knows how many men. It wiped out our and the Powell family when it reached America, because it was the origin of a feud. There are but few of either Powells or Harnways left because of that thing you hold in your hands.”
Jimmy turned it around, examining its curious scrolls and figures, which to him appeared of Persian design. “It seems a most absurd cause for a feud,” he said thoughtfully. His uncle, smiling grimly, watched him.
“Tell me, Uncle Lem, was our ancestor entitled to its possession?”
The spare figure straightened stiffly and swiftly.
“Of course. Otherwise it would never have left the possession of the Powells. The
