Armorel went often to the Gallery: the English girl reserves, as a rule, her study of pictures, and art generally, till she gets to Florence. Armorel, who had also studied art in Florence, found much to learn in our own neglected Gallery. Sometimes she went alone: sometimes she went with Effie, and then, being quite a learned person in the matter of pictures and their makers, she would discourse from room to room, till the day was all too short. The country visitors streamed past her in languid procession: the lovers met by appointment at her very elbow: the copyists flirted, talked scandal, wasted time, and sighed for commissions: but Armorel had not learned to watch people: she came to see the pictures: she had not begun to detach an individual from the crowd as a representative: in other words, she was not a novelist. This morning she was alone. She carried a notebook and pencil, and was standing before a picture making notes. It was a wet morning: the rooms were nearly empty, and the galleries were very quiet. She heard a manly step striding across the floor. She half turned as it approached her. Mr. Alec Feilding took off his hat. 'Mrs. Elstree told me you were here,' he said. 'I ventured to follow.' 'Yes?' 'You--you--come often, I believe?' He looked pale, and, for the first time in Armorel's recollection of him, he was nervous. 'There is, I believe, a good deal to be learned here.' 'There is, especially by those who want to paint--of course, I mean--who want to do their own paintings by themselves. Mr. Feilding, frankly, what do you want? Why do you come here in search of me?' Her face hardened: her eyes were cold and resolved. But the man was full of himself; he noted not these symptoms. 'I came because I have something to say.' 'Of importance?' 'Of great importance.' 'Not, I hope, connected with Art. Do not talk to me about Art, if you please, Mr. Feilding--not about any kind of Art.' He bowed gravely. 'One cannot always listen to conversation involving canons and first principles,' he said, with much condescension. 'Let me, however, congratulate you on the promise of your protégés, Archie and Effie Wilmot.' 'They are clever.' 'They are distinctly clever,' he repeated, recovering his usual self-possession. 'Effie, as perhaps she has told you, has been my pupil for a long time.' 'She has told me, in fact, something about her relations to you.' 'Yes.' The man was preoccupied and rather dense by nature. Therefore he caught only imperfectly these side meanings in Armorel's replies. 'Yes--quite so--I have been able to be useful to her, and to her brother also--very useful, indeed, happily.' 'And to--to others--as well--very useful, indeed,' Armorel echoed. He understood that there was some kind of menace in these words. But the very air, this morning, was full of menace. He passed them by. 'It is a curious coincidence that you should also have taken up this interesting pair. It ought to bring us closer.'