Miss Carr waited for her answer. Flora was dumb-foundered; fortunately the offended vanity of the artist soon relieved her from the painful and embarrassing silence. “I perceive that you are no judge of good paintings, Mrs. Lyndsay, or you must see some merit in the one before you. I showed that sketch to an Italian artist of celebrity when I was at Rome; he said, ‘That it was worthy of the original,’ which I considered no mean praise.” “Doubtless, he was right,” said Flora. “His judgment must be more correct than mine. Muff is so unlike the generality of dogs, that it is difficult to recognise her as such.” “She’s a fairy!” cried Wilhelmina, forgetting her anger, and hugging Muff to her breast. “A Brownie,” suggested Flora, delighted to find the conversation taking a turn. “Brownies belong to an inferior order of immortals,” quoth Wilhelmina, still caressing her dog. “My Muff is among the aristocrats of her species. But you have not seen the rest of my sketches. You will find a great many original pieces in the portfolio.” Flora wished them all behind the fire, and turning with a rueful seriousness to the sacred repository of _genius_, she drew forth several daubs that were meant for landscapes, the contemplation of which would have provoked the most indifferent person to mirth; but it was no laughing matter to examine them while a being so odd as Miss Carr was regarding you with a fixed gaze, hungry for applause and admiration. Flora thought she had discovered the maddest point in Miss Carr’s character. At length she stumbled upon a portrait. The figure was meant for that of a boy, but the head was as big as the head of a man, and covered with a forest of red curling hair, and he held in his hand a bunch of blue flowers as big as himself. “What an odd looking creature!” burst involuntarily from her lips. “Ah, my beautiful Adolphe!” cried Wilhelmina. “He was odd like myself—he stood alone in the world in my estimation. I must tell you the history of that child while you have his charming face before you.” Flora quietly slipped the portrait back into the portfolio. Her inclination to laugh became almost irrepressible. Miss Wilhelmina laid her right foot over her left knee, and, patting it almost as complacently as she would have done the silky brown back of her pet dog, gave Mrs Lyndsay the following passage from her history:— “That boy, with the education I meant to bestow upon him, would have become a great man—a second William Tell, or Andrew Hoffer—and I should have been the foster-mother of a man of genius. But it was not to be—there is a fate in these things.” “Did he die?” asked Flora. “Die! that would have been nothing out of the common way; everybody must die, some time or other. Oh, no, he may be living yet for what I know—it was far worse than that.” Flora became interested.