"You are very kind; but we dine at four; and it is half-past three now. A thousand thanks for our private view; and good-bye." "Good-bye. I am coming to the carriage with you." When she was seated in her brougham, Mrs. Champernowne for the second time offered her hand to the painter, while the most discreet of nieces looked out of the opposite window. "Is it really to be good-bye?" she asked, as Mr. Crawford pressed the slender hand gently before releasing it. "Believe me it is better so. I thank you much for your interest in my work. I shall be hoping to please you when I am painting for other people. Good-bye." "And you are not angry with me?" "I have no right to be angry. What am I to tell your servant?" This inquiry had relation to the most discreet of footmen, who hovered in attendance; second only to the most discreet of nieces in his assumption of unconsciousness. "Home, if you please," answered Mrs. Champernowne with a little sigh or vexation. The siren had entertained a special penchant for this particular victim, and she did not like to see him escape alive and whole from amongst the corpses floating in the dim shades of her fatal cavern. The most discreet of nieces found her aunt by no means easy to please during the rest of that day; and the favourite Angora cat, repulsed and discomfited, was fain to creep into his elegant lair of quilted satin and wicker-work. "It is very hard that at five-and-thirty a woman cannot have a friend," thought the widow, as she pretended to doze by the hearth where the painter had so often found her in the dusky light, with her feet buried in the fleecy depths of the Polar-bear skin, and a faint glow from the fire glimmering here and there among the silken folds of her dress. "It is really very hard, for I liked him so much." * * * * * William Crawford watched the widow's brougham drive away, and then went slowly back to his painting-room. He carried a weary spirit to the shrine of Art, the great consoler; but to-day even the face of the serene goddess was darkened for him; as it had been years ago, when his young wife's death left him desolate. He stopped before his picture for a few minutes, looking at it wonderingly, lost in admiration of his own work. "I have painted _that_," he thought; "and yet I am not happy!" It was no impulse of vanity that prompted the thought. The artist would be something less than an artist if he did not recognise the beauty of his own creations. Even in this picture, to which he had given so much thought and labour, there were shortcomings which the painter's eye was quick to perceive; but he was proud of his finished work nevertheless; and he sat looking at it with a strange mixture of pride and sadness.