‘I’ll have the blinds drawn up,’ said Lady Baker, ‘and you shall see my gems. There is an Etty yonder that I would not part with if a good fairy offered me five additional years of life in exchange for it.’ ‘With so long a lease of life still in hand, five years more or less can seem of no consequence,’ said Geoffrey gallantly; ‘but I think an octogenarian would accept even a smaller bid for the picture.’ ‘Flatterer!’ exclaimed Lady Baker. ‘If you wish to see pictures, you must be good enough to ring that bell, in order that we may get a little more light.’ ‘A moment, dear Lady Baker,’ pleaded Geoffrey; ‘this half-light is delightful, and my eyes are like a cat’s. I can see best in a demi-obscurity like this. Yes, the Etty is charming. What modelling, what chiaroscuro, what delicious colouring!’ ‘You are looking at a Frost,’ said Lady Baker, with offended dignity. ‘A thousand pardons. I recognise the delicacy of his outlines, the purity of his colour. But forgive me, Lady Baker, when I tell you that my devotion to art is secondary to my desire to be alone with you!’ Lady Baker looked at him with a startled expression. Was it possible that this young Oxonian had been seized with a sudden and desperate passion for a woman old enough to be his mother? Young men are so foolish; and Lady Baker was so accustomed to hear herself talked of as a divinity, that she could hardly suppose herself inferior in attractiveness to Cleopatra or Ninon de l’Enclos. ‘What do you mean, Mr. Hossack?’ ‘Only that, presuming on your ladyship’s well-known nobility of soul and goodness of heart, I am about to appeal to both. Women of fashion have been called fickle, but I cannot think _you_ deserve that reproach.’ ‘I am not a woman of fashion,’ answered Lady Baker, still very much in the dark; ‘I have lived for art—art the all-sufficing, the eternal—not for the pretty frivolities which make up the sum of a London season. If I have lived in the midst of a crowd, it is because I have sought intellect and genius wherever they were to be found. I have striven to surround myself with great souls. If sometimes I have discovered only the empty husk where I had hoped to find the precious kernel, it is not my fault.’ ‘Would that the world could boast of more such women!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, feeling that he had cleared an avenue to the subject he wanted to arrive at. ‘Amongst your protégées of years gone by, Lady Baker, there was one in whose fate I am profoundly interested. She is the sister of my most valued friend. I speak of Janet Davoren.’ Lady Baker started, and a cloud came over her face, as if that name had been suggestive of painful recollections.