"Well, I know that, old lady. Isn't Kilby big enough to hold the lot? Let's have the place made a bit cheerful; I like to hear a good hearty shout of laughter now and then, and you've taken to do nothing else lately but grumble softly and scold." "It's a wicked story, Joseph, and you know it," cried Mrs Portlock, as the Churchwarden turned away from her and winked at the cat; "and as for noise, I'm sure you make enough in the house without wanting more." "Never mind, let's have more; and Cyril Mallow can shoot down the rabbits, for they're rather getting ahead." As he spoke he had been filling his pipe, and he now took out a letter, read it, and slowly folded it up for a pipe-light, saying to himself-- "He's no business to want me to lend him a hundred pound after what I so lately did for them as a start." James Magnus had been invited to take Julia's portrait, the Rector, artfully prompted thereto by Cynthia, accompanying the commission by a very warm invitation to stay at the rectory as much as he could while the portrait was in progress, as he heard that Mr Magnus was coming down to Gatley. Artingale dropped in at his friends studio on the very day that he received the Rector's letter--of course by accident, based upon a hint from Cynthia; and found Magnus sitting thoughtfully by his easel, pretending to paint, but doing nothing. "Why, Mag, you look well enough and strong enough now to thrash Hercules himself, in the person of our gipsy friend." "Yes, I feel myself again," was the reply. "By the way, Harry, I've had an invitation to Lawford." "Indeed! I'm very glad. I go down to-morrow." "The Rector wishes me to paint his daughter's portrait." "Not Cynthia's?" "No, that of his daughter Julia." "Why, Magnus," said Artingale, smiling to himself and laying his hand upon his friend's arm, "could you wish for a greater pleasure?" Magnus looked at him so fixedly for a few moments that Artingale felt that he must be suspected; but it was not so, the artist only shook his head, and there was a bitter look in his face, as he spoke again. "Pleasure!" he said; "how can it be a pleasure to me? Harry, my boy, how can you be so thoughtless. Do you think I could be guilty of so dishonourable an act?" "Dishonourable?" "Yes," cried Magnus passionately. "Should I not go there on false pretences to try and win that poor girl from the man to whom she is engaged?" "But, my dear fellow, it is a folly of her father's invention; she detests this Perry-Morton, as every right-thinking, matter-of-fact girl would. Why, the fellow dances attendance upon every woman of fashion, and deserves to be encountered with any weapon one could seize. Tell me, do you think it right that she should marry such a man?" "No: certainly not. No more right than that she should be deluded into marrying another man she did not love."