A CAB stopped in Charlroy Street towards the end of May, and there followed a thundering knock at the door of No. 30.

Hugh was working near the open window, and, looking out to see whether the visitor was known to him, he saw Charlie Brock. Hugh took the picture upon which he was working from the easel and turned its face towards the wall. He set up a landscape, and had just completed the substitution as Brock, in his usual headstrong manner, burst into the room.

He asked a dozen questions without waiting for replies before he gave Hugh time to ask in return why he was so soon returned from Italy.

So dull, my dear boy; nobody there now; couldn't stand it; not a soul to speak to excepting hotel garçons and dirty models. All right at first-lots of fellows, capital fun, the native all in his glory. By George, old fellow, your cousin must be a marvel! Introduced to her friend, M. de Gaillefontaine. Didn't see her-no one knew where she was; monsieur said she was indisposed. It's my idea he knew no more than the rest of us. Queer little fellow, monsieur ;

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stands about that height; got a beak like this. Call him the marquis; but, by George, if appearance gives the title, he should be an emperor. All the boys mad about René Biron. I don't know how many portraits of her they have sent into the show, but leaves in Vallombrosa are not more plentiful. All manner of stories about her; some say she's married to the Frenchman.'

'Married!'

'Yes; and it looks like it too. He accompanies her everywhere, receives her guests when she is absent, holds the money bag, and kicks up independently all round. You know she has come to England?'

'Yes.'

'Well, she seems to be running as fast here as she ran in Italy-if not faster. What's the matter, old boy? You look as down in the mouth as though it was your money she's making ducks and drakes of. You had not any idea of marriage and shares in the estates?'

'No. But isn't it depressing to hear of a creature perfect in beauty "running fast as you call it? A girl only personally lovely seems to me as a sky would seem without

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stars, with nothing to tell of the mysterious beauty beyond, nothing to hope for, nothing to stir the soft low harmonies of our nature.'

Brock was quieted more effectually by Hugh's manner than if he had entreated him to be silent. He looked at his old chum suspiciously, wondering whether he had fallen into the clutch of religious fanatics, or whether he was 'sickening' for any malady. turned the subject at once.

He

Of

'I daresay you're right. course it is to be deplored that the best statues are only fragments,' he said. Haven't you begun work yet?'

'I've been at work a couple of hours.'

Charlie Brock looked into the picture he was seated before, and then held it sideways to the light; again looked at Hugh suspiciously, and then said,

'You clam! this pot-boiler is as dry as ever it will be. You sha'n't treat me as an outsider. I'll see what you've been working at before I leave the place, wherever you may have hidden it. What do you mean by concealing your stuff like a great shame-faced gal?'

He was rummaging round the room and getting near the wet canvas. There was no avoiding discovery, so Hugh went to it, saying,

This is the work. Hang me if I know why I should conceal it! Yet somehow an instinctive impulse leads me to conceal it when ever a fellow comes here. Don't you know what it is to feel in regard to certain things that they should be sacredly secret-things that you would not have vulgarised by common inspection, not subjected to thoughtless criticism?'

'I can't say I ever felt so about my own work; always been too poor to feel sentimental; but I can understand a fellow with deeper

feelings than mine being jealous of other eyes seeing his work, and wishing like a lover to keep his darling solely to himself. And I respect such a sentiment; and so, old chap, we won't look at the picture, after all; but we'll have a pipe and talk about the boys. The native has two things in the Academy; you saw them, I suppose? He left Italy directly I got there; mad about your cousin, of course; going down to the kick-up next week. The Frenchman's forgotten to ask me, yet I told him I was a chum of yours. Have you heard of the affair? Just as unique and remarkable as the lady who gives it-operas, bals masques, and all the rest of it. Jason and Lomax have been painting scenery for a bijou theatre; and from their description I should think the place is a Bohemian's paradise and nothing less. I came back last night. Didn't see you at the club. The fellows told me you were down on your luck, and less constant in your attendance there. I shall come and sweep your cobwebs away; I have no studio yet. Are you working much ?'

'Pretty steadily.'
'Landscape ?'
'No, figure.'

'Who's the model?'

Hugh had the canvas upon the easel, and was touching up the background; Brock on the other side of the easel, smoking and wondering much at the silence of his friend.

'Come and look at my work, Charlie; perhaps you will know who my model is.'

Brock crossed to Hugh's side, and, as he caught sight of the portrait, exclaimed, René Biron ! your cousin!'

Is it like other portraits of her?'

'Yes; except in the expression. Others are vivacious, wild, daring; yours is altogether pensive, and

almost sad. Her eyes here look as though they were filled with moonlight; in all other portraits they are suggestive of volcanoes and other devilish fires.'

Then I have been more fortu nate than other artists, who have not seen her more beautiful mood.'

'Is she sitting to you now?'

'No; she sat to me when I did not know who she was, at the time when she was missing from Italy.'

'That is consistent with the general account of her behaviour. What a mad little wretch she must be! And how did she discover herself?'

Hugh briefly recounted the particulars of that last interview, with anxiety to know what construction his friend would put upon René's behaviour. As he concluded, Brock exclaimed,

And

'Just like them; they're all as jealous as cats with a mouse. since that pretty little display you have seen nothing of her?'

Hugh shook his head as he laid aside his brushes with a sigh. He lit a pipe, and, turning to Charlie Brock, nursed his knee, and said, 'Now, Charlie, you shall be a listener, and I will do the talking. I will have it all out-all that has been constantly bothering my mind since that interview-ah, and before! It will relieve me as tears ease a woman's heart. I am in love with this girl; not in the ordinary way.' (What man ever loved well who did not think his passion superior to any that ever before animated man's heart? was Charlie Brock's unspoken comment.)

'I love too deeply to make a heedless marriage, as most men do who are infatuated with a beautiful girl without reference to the future. Knowing her no better than you and others know her, I would not marry her; knowing her as little as I know her, I would still not marry her.'

'Not a bit. I've seen half of the will-sufficient to make me believe that I am legally the possessor of Riverford; and I was told before René Biron, or whatever that girl's name may be, sat for me, that she would attempt to inveigle me into a marriage, in order to retain the position jeopardised by the loss of that half will, and a third party's knowledge of its existence.'

'Well, I cannot see how you square your pure love for the girl with a knowledge of these characteristic peculiarities. But possibly you don't believe what you hear.'

'Something of this I am compelled to believe. I have actually seen the half will which led her to visit me.'

'By George, it was a fortunate thing for you that her devilish jealousy got the better of her, or you might have been hooked! Phew! what a nice young party for a wife! But I am still puzzled to understand how you reconcile yourself to the belief that your love for such a girl is more than a mere sensual passion.'

'It is because I believe her to possess noble and beautiful feelings far outweighing the faulty dispositions of her nature. Every day that she sat here I saw in the expression of her face good contending with bad; and sometimes I incline to think that her last exhibition was not mere jealousy, but a really virtuous indignation against me for what she considered a vicious pursuit of an innocent woman. It was that varying expression of her face which rendered me unable to make a definite portrait whilst she sat. This likeness I have painted in her absence, and from the memory of the expression that gave her face a beauty which none could see without worshipping. Look at this face, and tell me if that pure loveliness could dwell together with a soul of infamy.'

My dear boy, I fear your love is common to most men who fall to physical beauty. What man, especially with poetry in his heart, converses with a beautiful woman and does not immediately invest her with virtues which she would blush to arrogate? Fortify yourself against this syren, not by closing your ears to her song, but by opening your eyes to her deformities, and remembering that you are a man and a rational thinking animal. Keep your eyes upon her claws.'

'But look at this face-it is hers!'

'And differs as all must that are not from the life. It is bad work

and untrue to nature, I'll swear. Why, how could you paint your memory of that face without giving to it the expression your fancy suggests? One might as well try to paint Guy Fawkes without his matches and black eyebrows. Couldn't do it. Undeceive yourself, Hugh, old man; and regard your feeling for this girl as no better than it is.'

'I would run my palette-knife into this painting that, morning and night, I sit before and love, if my feeling were not holier than you believe it. If I were not convinced that there is something to love in that woman, I would have done with this picture, and feel it my duty to get her and all thought of her away from my mind.'

Brock looked at Hugh in silence for a few minutes, smoking and marvelling over the simplicity of the tall lean friend whose sweet kind eyes rested on his picture, and then he said,

. 'It is astonishing how thoroughly a man's disposition tinctures his works from the least to the greatest. In loving or painting you are the same. You take it into your head that all Nature is gray or brown or purple, and you will paint her complexion no other colour; and you take it into your heart that there must be a lovely soul behind the lovely mask, and nothing can shake your constancy. I am as vacillating as you are steadfast; but the same principle applies to me. I will alter my picture a dozen times in a day, in deference to the opinion of other fellows; and I shall get to think René Biron an angel if I listen long enough to you, though common sense tells me you are wrong. Are you taking any steps towards recovering your property?"

'Oh, dear, no. The same voice that tells me I am heir declares my cousin an impostor, and I be