Florimel was beginning to understand that the shield of the portrait was not large enough to cover many more visits to the studio. Still she must and would venture; and should anything be said, there at least was the portrait. For some weeks it had been all but finished, was never off its easel, and always showed a touch of wet paint somewhere--he kept the last of it lingering, ready to prove itself almost yet not altogether finished. What was to follow its absolute completion, neither of them could tell. The worst of it was that their thoughts about it differed discordantly. Florimel not unfrequently regarded the rupture of their intimacy as a thing not undesirable--this chiefly after such a talk with Lady Bellair as had been illustrated by some tale of misalliance or scandal between high or low, of which kind of provision for age the bold-faced countess had a large store: her memory was little better than an ashpit of scandal. Amongst other biographical scraps one day she produced the case of a certain earl’s daughter, who, having disgraced herself by marrying a low fellow--an artist, she believed--was as a matter of course neglected by the man whom, in accepting him, she had taught to despise her, and, before a twelvemonth was over--her family finding it impossible to hold communication with her--was actually seen by her late maid scrubbing her own floor. “Why couldn’t she leave it dirty?” said Florimel. “Why indeed,” returned Lady Bellair, “but that people sink to their fortunes! Blue blood won’t keep them out of the gutter.” The remark was true, but of more general application than she intended, seeing she herself was in the gutter and did not know it. She spoke only of what followed on marriage beneath one’s natal position, than which she declared there was nothing worse a woman of rank could do. “She may get over anything but that,” she would say, believing, but not saying, that she spoke from experience.