But he remonstrated in vain. Philip Foley rejoiced in his poverty and his deprivations as a gladiator might rejoice in the training that he knew must insure victory. (To suffer and be strong was the young painter's motto, and he took a boyish pride in his bare rooms and his scanty dinners, the feat of pedestrianism that saved him a half-crown in cab-hire, the heroism which enabled him to carry his head loftily under a hat whose bloom had vanished. He was very young. His faults were the faults of youth--his graces the graces that perish with youth. He had all the insolent confidence in his own judgment and the contempt for other people which seems the peculiar attribute of five-and-twenty. He would point you out the feeble drawing in a fresco by Michael Angelo, or the false lights in a Rembrandt, with an utter unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself. Hot-headed, generous-hearted, impulsive, undisciplined, candid, and true, Philip Foley was the incarnation of ambitious youth before the fiery steel has been thrice refined in the furnace of disappointment. He had only just begun the great battle, and as yet he saw in failure the evidence of the popular error, and not of his own weakness. The vision of his own future shone before him--only a little distant, and with no hindering clouds between. He was ready to paraphrase Cæsar's despatch, and cry aloud to all the world, "I am coming--I shall see--I shall conquer!") The painter did not turn his head to bid his friend Sigismund adieu; he was looking along the line of carriages for that one equipage, to behold which was so thrilling a pleasure that it was worth his while to waste half a day for the chance of obtaining it. The fairy chariot came by at last, with the fairy in it, and all the mortal coaches melted into air. The fairy was a pretty, coquettish-looking girl, who seemed scarcely eighteen years of age, and whose dark-grey eyes and black eyelashes were rendered doubly enchanting by the piquancy of their contrast with her rippling golden hair. The fair one with the golden locks has become quite a common young person in these days of cunning hair-washes and Circassian waters; but Florence Crawford's waving tresses had been tinted only by the hand of Nature, and she was by no means proud of their sunny hue. She would have preferred to be a heavy-browed person of the masculine order, with blue-black hair and an aquiline nose, instead of that dear little insolent _retroussé_, which seemed perpetually asking questions of all humanity. Yes; Miss Crawford's nose was decidedly _retroussé_; but it as little resembled the vulgar snub, or the lumpy pug, or the uncompromising turn-up, as a pearl resembles a lump of chalk.