Then, realising that he had found an innocent victim, he began to expatiate on art and on the pictures around them, and she to listen, innocence attending to ignorance. "He is very clever, isn't he?" put in Miss Lambert, during a pause in the exordium. "A genius, my dear young lady, a genius," said Mr Verneede, looking at her over his shoulder as he replaced on a high bracket a little picture he had reached down to show her. "One of the few living artists who can paint light. I may say that he paints light with a delicacy and an elegance all his own. _Fiat Lux_"--the shelf came down with a crash and a cloud of dust--"as the poet says--pray don't move, I will restore the _débris_--as the poet says. Now the gem of my young friend Leavesley's collection, in my mind, is the John the Baptist." He went to a huge canvas which stood with its face to the wall, seized it with arms outstretched, and turned it towards the girl. It was a picture of a semi-nude female after Reubens that the blundering old gentleman had seized upon. "Observe the sunlight on the beard," came the voice of the showman from behind the canvas, "the devotion in the eyes, the--ooch!!" A pillow caught from the couch by Frank Leavesley who had just entered, and dexterously thrown, had flattened canvas and showman beneath a cloud of dust. CHAPTER III A COUNCIL OF THREE "Now, let's all be happy," said Miss Lambert; they had finished tea and Belinda was removing the things, "for I must be going in a minute, and I have such a lot of things to say--oh dear me, that reminds me," her under-lip fell slightly. "What?" asked Leavesley. "That I'm perfectly miserable." "Oh, don't say that----" "My dear young lady----" "I mean I _ought_ to be perfectly miserable," said Miss Lambert with a charming smile, "but somehow I'm not. Do you know, I never am what I ought to be. When I ought to be happy I'm miserable, and when I ought to be miserable I'm happy. Father says I was addled at birth, and that I ought to have been put out of doors on a red-hot shovel as they used to do long ago in Ireland with the omadlunns, or was it the changelings--no matter. I wanted to talk to you about father--no, please don't go," to Verneede, who had made a little movement as if to say "Am I _de trop_?" "You are both so clever I'm sure you will be able to give me good advice. He's worrying so." "Ah!" said Mr Verneede, with the air of a physician at a consultation. He was in his element, he saw a prospect of unburthening himself of some of his superfluous advice. "It's this Action," resumed Fanny, as if she were speaking of a tumour or carbuncle, "that makes him so bad; I'm getting quite frightened about him." "Was that the action he spoke to me about?" asked Leavesley. "Which?" asked Fanny. "The one against a bookseller?" "Oh no, I think that's settled; it's the one against our cousin, Mr Bevan." "Ah!"