There was one exception, however: Ned Stanwell, who was deplorably good-natured, had always lent a patient ear to Caspar, and he now reaped his reward by being taken into Kate's favour. Before she had been a month in the building they were on confidential terms as to Caspar's health, and lately Stanwell had penetrated farther, even to the inmost recesses of her anxiety about her brother's career. Caspar had recently had a bad blow in the refusal of his _magnum opus_--a vast allegorical group--by the Commissioners of the Minneapolis Exhibition. He took the rejection with Promethean irony, proclaimed it as the clinching proof of his ability, and abounded in reasons why, even in an age of such crass artistic ignorance, a refusal so egregious must react to the advantage of its object. But his sister's indignation, if as glowing, was a shade less hopeful. Of course Caspar was going to succeed--she knew it was only a question of time--but she paled at the word and turned imploring eyes on Stanwell. _Was there time enough?_ It was the one element in the combination that she could not count on; and Stanwell, reddening under her look of interrogation, and cursing his own glaring robustness, would affirm that of course, of course, of course, by everything that was holy there was time enough--with the mental reservation that there wouldn't be, even if poor Caspar lived to be a hundred. "Vos that you yelling for the shanitor, Mr. Sdanwell?" inquired an affable voice through the doorway; and Stanwell, turning with a laugh, confronted the squat figure of a middle-aged man in an expensive fur coat, who looked as if his face secreted the oil which he used on his hair. "Hullo, Shepson--I should say I was yelling. Did you ever feel such an atmosphere? That fool has forgotten to light the stove. Come in, but for heaven's sake don't take off your coat." Mr. Shepson glanced about the studio with a look which seemed to say that, where so much else was lacking, the absence of a fire hardly added to the general sense of destitution. "Vell, you ain't as vell fixed as Mr. Mungold--ever been to his studio, Mr. Sdanwell? De most ex_quis_ite blush hangings, and a gas-fire, choost as natural--" "Oh, hang it, Shepson, do you call _that_ a studio? It's like a manicure's parlour--or a beauty-doctor's. By George," broke off Stanwell, "and that's just what he is!" "A peauty-doctor?" "Yes--oh, well, you wouldn't see," murmured Stanwell, mentally storing his epigram for more appreciative ears. "But you didn't come just to make me envious of Mungold's studio, did you?" And he pushed forward a chair for his visitor. The latter, however, declined it with an affable motion. "Of gourse not, of gourse not--but Mr. Mungold is a sensible man. He makes a lot of money, you know." "Is that what you came to tell me?" said Stanwell, still humorously.