Under the splendid trees of the hill place where the little Hasbrooks and their mother were reigning what Aunt Azraella might have considered a reign of terror, Prue posed for Bartlemy with the four children around her whose eager hands she was filling with daisies. The picture was to be called: "My Lady June," and on it Bartlemy built high hopes of early fame. It was progressing slowly; neither bribes, threats nor prayers could keep Ted and Bobby Hasbrook still long at a time; Doris was an ideal model, but lively little Betty was as reliable as a butterfly, and Bartlemy had to take what he called "snap-shot strokes" on her restless little figure. The picture bade fair to be something well worth doing if Bartlemy proved equal to his own conception. Prue, lovely beyond words in her floating white draperies, swaying downward to the children as she enriched them with the dower of June, was like the incarnation of the summer-time, so exquisite that the young artist had to fight to keep his hand steadily at his work, and his mind from wandering from Prue as a model to the Prue whom he daily feared more and more beyond his reach. Basil newly married and engrossed in his happiness, Bruce working hard under Dr. Fairbairn's strict requirements left Commodore Rutherford very much to the society of his youngest son, between whom and the big sailor there sprang up a beautiful intimacy of friendship, founded on their differences. Bartlemy was sufficiently an artist to talk of himself quite simply, and he and his father had discussed the probability of Prue, at some future day, making him happy as Wythie had made Basil. "You are only a boy, my great son, but I think you know perfectly well what you will want when you are ready to take it, and though you are so young I should be delighted if beautiful Prudence cared enough for you to wait for you. It would not necessarily be long; you have as much to start upon as Basil has," said this comrade-father, wise in reading the set of tides and winds. "But, my son, though Prue is fond of you in her frank sisterly manner of established custom, it is Arthur Stanhope whom she will marry, and not my boy, who must find his consolation in the galleries of Europe as many another disappointed artist has found it before him." "Not without a try at a better fate, father," said Bartlemy with a certain compression of the lip that meant determination. Prue, bending forward that day, under the glorious trees, amid the waving grass, and holding out the daisies to wriggling Bob and Ted, felt the determination and preoccupation of the painter's mind, and dreaded a scene that would be painful to them both. So she chatted on in a ceaseless flood of varying topics, wondering if this really could be only Bartlemy with whom she felt so ill at ease.