Murmurs of applause were upon every lip as our artist finished his narrative, when Mr. Oldstone, rising, thus addressed the club. "Gentlemen; I think you will all agree with me that my friend Mr. McGuilp has fully earned his sitting from the fair Helen?" "Yes, yes," cried several voices; "he has paid us beforehand. Let him have his rights." At this moment the door opened ajar and the head of Dame Hearty appeared at the aperture to inform the club that her daughter was now at their disposal. "Let her be brought in!" shouted a chorus of voices. "It is but fair that we should have one more look at Helen before Mr. McGuilp walks off with her." Helen then appeared in the doorway and was greeted enthusiastically by the whole club, in the midst of which the painter, after looking at his watch and ascertaining that it was yet early enough for a good sitting, left the room and made for his studio, where, having set his palette, he was joined shortly afterwards by his fair model. Having arranged his colours and placed his canvas on the easel, he sat contemplating the portrait he had commenced so recently. Alas! how flat and insipid his poor work looked after having gazed on the bright original! It was but the first painting, it is true, and we know that nothing really good can be done at once; but, then, what drawing he found to correct now that he looked at his work with a fresh eye! The awfulness of the difficulties in art now rose up in his mind to appal him, and he uttered a sigh. "Can all the glazing and scumbling in the world," muttered he to himself, "ever advance this portrait one step towards the divine original?" Thus musing, the painter seized the canvas in both hands and breathed over its surface. Immediately afterwards, mixing up some colour sparingly, he scumbled over the entire surface of the portrait. Helen, whose eye dwelt upon the artist's every movement, whether from curiosity, or from some mysterious sympathy she felt for the young painter, demanded of him why he breathed on the face of her picture. "To breathe into it the breath of life, Helen," replied McGuilp, smilingly. Helen opened her large blue eyes with an expression of half wonderment, half doubt, not knowing whether the painter spoke in jest, or whether an artist really had some occult power in his very breath that could vivify the canvas. How was she to know, poor innocent child! Village bred and born in an age, as our readers will recollect, before photography had rendered too familiar the representation of the human face even for the veriest peasant any longer to wonder at the art by which it is produced?