"And I had to, whether I liked it or not. Then he'd grin and wag his head at me, and sometimes say if he knew where there was another woman like me he'd stick up to her. 'Lord have mercy,' I used to think, 'on the woman who'd give you a second look unless she was obliged to!' "I grew to be that shaky and trembly that my life was a perfect misery; and so was Lemon's. But I used to speak about it, which was a little relief, while poor Lemon would never so much as open his lips. I pitied him a deal more than I did myself. I did say to him once: "'Lemon, let's call a broker in when Devlin's not here, and sell the furniture, and run away.' "'You talk like a fool,' said Lemon. 'If we was to hide ourselves in the bowels of the earth he'd ferret us out.' "Then Lemon said one night that Devlin was going to paint our portraits. "'He sha'n't paint mine,' I cried, 'not if he orfered to frame it in dymens!' "The words was no sooner out of my lips than I turned almost to a jelly at hearing Devlin's voice at the back of me, saying, "'Nonsense, nonsense, Mrs. Lemon! Surely it ain't me you're speaking of? Don't they paint all the Court beauties, and ain't you as good as the best of them? Your face is like milk and roses, and I'm the artist that's going to do justice to it. You can't refuse me; you won't have the heart to refuse me.' "Which I hadn't, with him so close to me. He seemed to take the backbone out of me; I used to feel quite limp when he took me up like that. He _did_ paint my picture, and there it is, stuck on the wall; and though it's come over me a hunderd times to drag it down and burn it, it's more than I dare do for fear of something dreadful happening. "I can't describe what I went through while that picture was being painted. There was I, setting like a stature in the position that Devlin placed me; and there was Lemon, leaning for'ard, with his hands clarsping the arms of his chair, and his eyes glaring like a ghost's; and there was Devlin, waving his brush and painting me, making all sorts of strange remarks, and singing all sorts of songs in all sorts of languages. He could do that, sir; I don't believe there's a language in the world that he can't speak, and I don't believe there's anything in the world, or out of it, for that matter, that he doesn't know. "_Now, where did he get it all from?_ "I used to wonder about his age. It was a regular puzzler. Sometimes he looked quite young, and sometimes he looked as old as Methusalem. I plucked up courage once to ask him. "'What do you say to twenty?' he answered. 'Or if that won't do, what do you say to eighty, or a couple of hunderd?' "When my portrait was finished he pretended to go into egstacies over it, and said that it really ought to be egshibited. "'Mind you keep it as a airloom,' he said. 'You've no notion what it's worth.'