"I don't care," burst from Aurora, as if in reply to an inaudible criticism, "I just love it! I don't care if it is flattered. I could hug you for it, Gerald Fane. I think it's perfectly lovely. It's going to be a solid satisfaction. By and by, when my double chin has caught up with me, and I'm a homely old thing, and nobody knows what I did look like in my prime, I'll have this to show them. By that time, with my brain weakening, I hope I shall have come to thinking it was as like me as two peas. There's some reason for living now." Every caller was taken to see the portrait, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne's opinion of the talented artist. The majority of visitors candidly shared her admiration, though not one woman among them can have failed to say to herself that the portrait was flattered. But with a portrait of oneself to have executed, who would not prefer the brush that makes beautiful? Interest spread in the painter, whose work few even of the Florentines knew except from hearsay. No one who saw Mrs. Hawthorne's portrait was very clearly aware--such is fame!--that it was for Fane a departure. Until it came to Leslie. She stood a long time before the painting, then exclaimed: "What a joke!" But she was inclined to take the same view as Mrs. Hawthorne, that when he could paint like that it was a pity Gerald should not do it oftener, to build up a reputation and fill his purse. She only would have advised him not to go quite so far another time in the same direction. * * * * * As Gerald, the portrait finished, came no more to the house, fairly as if modesty could not have endured the compliments showered upon him, Aurora with a communication to make had to square herself before her desk in the room of the red flowers and painstakingly pen a note. Aurora, when taking pains, wrote the cleanest, clearest, most characterless hand that was ever seen outside of a school copy-book, and took pride in it. Aurora's language, when she applied herself to composition, lost the last vestige of color and life. She wrote: "My dear Mr. Fane: