And she laughed very happily as she led me in and gravely introduced me to her mother. Both had been knitting stockings for me, and I thought the study had never looked so warm or so home-like as it did with their work-baskets and wools about, and with these two good little women making kindly welcoming uproar around me. To-to broke his chain, and climbed up on my shoulder, snarling and showing his teeth jealously at Babiole. The delighted clamour soothed my ears as no prima donna's singing had ever done. That evening I could have embraced Mrs. Ellmer with tenderness. Next day I was alone in the drawing-room, the ladies having given up possession of the Hall and returned to the cottage, when I heard footsteps at the open door and a voice-- 'May I come in, Mr. Maude?' 'Certainly.' I was busy putting up two paintings of Norwegian scenery in place of the portraits of Lady Helen, which were on the ground against the wall. On seeing my occupation, Babiole uttered a short cry of surprise and dismay. I said nothing, but put my head on one side to see if one of my new pictures was hung straight. At last she spoke-- 'Oh, Mr. Maude!' was all she said, in a tone of timid reproach. 'Well.' 'You're not going to take her down after all this time?' 'You see I have taken her down.' 'Oh, why?' It was not curiosity; it was entreaty. 'Don't you think she's been up there long enough?' 'If you were the woman and she were the man you wouldn't say that.' 'What should I say?' 'You would say, "He's been up there so long that, whatever he's done, he may as well stay there now."' 'That would be rather contemptuous tolerance, wouldn't it?' 'But the picture wouldn't know that; and if the original should ever grow sorry for all the harm she--he had done, it would be something to know that the picture still hung there just the same.' The story must have leaked out, then--the first part through Fabian, probably, and the rest through the divorce court columns of the daily papers. I said nothing in answer to the girl's pleadings, but I restored the portraits to their old places with the excuse that the landscapes would look better in the dining-room. Our studies began again that very afternoon. Babiole had forgotten nothing, though work had, of course, grown slack during the hot days of the summer. She had had another and rather absorbing love affair, too, the details of which I extracted with the accompaniment of more blushes than in the old days. 'We shall have you getting married and flying away from us altogether, I suppose, now, before we know where we are.' 'No,' she protested stoutly, 'I'm not going to marry; I am going to devote myself to art.'