"But there was some one else took a fancy to you before I did," exclaimed Flo. "There's not the least occasion to blush, Lady Cecil, for the some one else was only a middle-aged man, with such a shelf on his dear old back that I sometimes quite long to set a row of Carl-Theodore tea-cups on his coat-collar for ornamentation. It was papa who took a fancy to you. He's the most absurd old thing in the world, and he says yours is the very face he has been waiting for, for his new picture. He is going to paint the prison scene in _Faust_, and he declares that you have the exact expression he wants for his Gretchen. You have no idea what trouble he will take to get a sitting from any one whose face has fascinated him. Professional models are all very well, but you can't get a professional model to read Goethe, or to imagine that she sees an infant struggling in the water, for a shilling an hour. What papa wants is expression, and he was struck by your face the other night when you were singing at Lady Jacynt's; there was an exalted look about your eyes and forehead, he said, which would be worth a fortune to him; so I am to exert all my fascinations in order to induce you to give him a sitting or two; and I'm sure you will, won't you, Lady Cecil? for he really is a dear good creature." Cecil assented very readily, flattered and honoured by the painter's request. She was a far more reverent disciple of art than Florence Crawford, who spoke flippantly of the greatest master of his age as a dear old thing, and was wont to frisk hither and thither in her father's painting-room, criticising his pictures as freely as if they had been so many Parisian bonnets. It would have been very strange if Cecil had not been glad to exchange the sordid atmosphere of Dorset Square for the dreamy splendour of the Fountains. The hour or two which Mr. Crawford had entreated in the first place grew into many hours, and Cecil had spent half-a-dozen pleasant mornings in the great master's painting-room before the vague shadow which was so unintelligible to common eyes grew out of the canvas, and became a woman instinct with life and soul. Flo brought her box of water-colours on these occasions, and perched herself at a little table in a corner of the spacious chamber; for she made a faint show of devotion to art now and then as an excuse for intruding into the painter's sanctum. What place of retreat could be sacred from an only daughter, and such an only daughter as Florence Crawford?