A deadly coldness had crept over Sophia Granger--a cold, blank feeling, which had never come upon her until that moment. He had a wife, then, that dashing young painter with the brilliant brown eyes--the only man who had ever aroused the faintest interest in her well-regulated soul. He was married, and any vague day-dream with which she had interwoven his image was the merest delusion and phantasmagoria. She was unspeakably angry with herself for this unworthy weakness. A painter--a person paid by her father--something less than a curate--if it was possible for any creature to seem less than Mr. Tillott in Sophia's estimation. He was a married man--a base impostor, who had sailed under false colours--a very pirate. All those graceful airy compliments, those delicate attentions, which had exercised such a subtle influence over her narrow mind--had, indeed, awakened in her something that was almost sentiment--were worse than meaningless, were the wiles of an adventurer trading on her folly. "He wanted to paint papa's picture," she thought, "and I suppose he fancied my influence might help him." But what of Clarissa's visits to the painter's lodgings? what possible reason could she have for going there? Miss Granger's suspicions were shapeless and intangible as yet, but she did suspect. More than once--many times, in fact--during the painting of the portrait, she had seen, or had imagined she could see, signs and tokens of a closer intimacy between the painter and her father's wife than was warranted by their ostensible acquaintance. The circumstances were slight enough in themselves, but these fragile links welded together made a chain which would have been good enough evidence in a criminal court, skilfully handled by an Old Bailey lawyer. Sophia Granger racked her brain to account for this suspected intimacy. When and where had these two been friends, lovers perhaps? Mr. Austin had been away from England for many years, if his own statement were to be believed. It must have been abroad, therefore, that Clarissa had known him--in her school-days. He had been drawing-master, perhaps, in the seminary at Belforet. What more likely? Miss Granger cherished the peculiar British idea of all foreign schools, that they were more or less sinks of iniquity. A flirtation between drawing-master and pupil would be a small thing in such a pernicious atmosphere. Even amidst the Arcadian innocence of native academies such weeds have flourished This flirtation, springing up in foreign soil, would be of course ten times more desperate, secret, jesuitical in fact, than any purely English product. Yes, Miss Granger decided at the end of every silent debate in which she argued this question with herself--yes, that was the word of the enigma. These two had been lovers in the days that were gone; and meeting again, both married, they were more than half lovers still.