The gentlemanly creature lighted a cluster of wax-candles and a moderator-lamp, and stirred the fire as softly as if the poker had been sheathed in velvet. No vulgar glare of gas ever illuminated the Hermitage. Moderator-lamps, burning beneath Parian shades, cast their chastened light upon the sombre green of the velvet pile, and waxen tapers twinkled dimly as in a chapel. Mrs. Champernowne glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece. "What time do you dine, Mr. Crawford?" she asked. "I mustn't detain you here while Florence is waiting for you at the Fountains." "Florence dines in Bloomsbury this evening, and I--I dined between three and four," said the painter, who had eaten three biscuits and drunk a glass of pale sherry at that hour. Was there any such thing as dinner for privileged creatures who were permitted to enter the sacred chambers of the Hermitage? "I wonder whether she thinks I would leave her for the sake of the best dinner the united _chefs_ of all the London clubs could devise?" he thought. He stayed at the Hermitage, and drank innumerable cups of tea, and forgot that he had ever sworn to abjure the society of Georgina Champernowne. After tea there were new photographs to be looked at, and pleasant talk about the celebrities of the Parisian _salons_, and then the widow played the softest little bits of Mozart for the painter's edification. Peculiar in every thing, she had her peculiarity with regard to music, and played Mozart, and Mozart only. "Other composers are very grand," she said, "but Mozart is grand enough and good enough for me. I find every thing that I care for in his music, and don't care to go further. You know I am wicked enough to hate strangers." Rossini and Auber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, were amongst Mrs. Champernowne's strangers. The room filled in the course of the evening, and the painter stayed till eleven o'clock. He went very little into society, and Mrs. Champernowne was pleased to exhibit him to her friends. He knew that he was a slave amongst other slaves, who smiled as they contemplated one another's fetters. But in the siren's presence he gave himself up to the sweet intoxication of her influence. To-night she was especially gracious to him, though even when most gracious she contrived to avoid any thing like exclusiveness. "You are my prodigal son," she said. "I began to think that I was never to see you again." Throughout all the evening she said nothing worth recording. She sat in the midst of handsomer women than herself, and gave place while cleverer women talked their best; but those who left her presence remembered her and her only; and there were many who would have sympathised with William Crawford as he walked slowly homeward through the highways and byways of Kensington, pondering upon his enchantress.