Rose gave him a reproachful glance. “And you think I like to sit here and listen to Mammy Hannah snore while you smoke and paint?” she said in a vexed tone, “for you always smoke and she always falls asleep.” “Which is a special providence,” he retorted, “and the greatest virtue I ever met in a duenna.” Without replying Rose looked absently around her, observing the details of his workshop more carefully than usual and noticing the harmonious effect of the colors, which he had grouped in his hangings. There was the high northern light concentrated on his subject, but beyond, in the corners, there were invitingly rich shadows, and here and there a bold, half finished sketch had been nailed to the walls. A well worn Turkey rug covered the portion of the floor occupied by his model, and a table in the window was set with a chafing-dish, a box of Egyptians and an odd shaped bronze tea-pot with some egg-shell cups which he had purchased in Japan. In a way Rose knew the history of everything in the room and almost the cost, but there was a touch of luxury about it which vaguely irritated her; it often seemed that Allestree was too well off to ever be a great artist,--he lacked the spur of necessity. “Shall you paint for a living if you are ever poor?” she asked abruptly, resting her chin in her hand and contemplating him with a clear and impersonal gaze. Allestree looked up, and observing the delicate hand with its tapering fingers and the jewelled chain which clasped her throat, smiled. “Shall you sing?” he asked, amused. She sighed softly. “I wish that I might--and in opera too!” she replied, “I fear I should to-day but for father. You think me a very useless person, I see,” she added, smiling a little, “and perhaps I am. But isn’t it because I’ve had no chance? Girls are trained up in such an objectless way unless they are brought up to marry. Thank heaven, I escaped that; father is as innocent of such designs as a baby! But if I had been a boy I should have been given a profession, I should have had something to do instead of being expected merely to dress well and look ornamental!” As she spoke her face lost a little of its vivid color and animation, but the slight pensiveness of her look seemed to Allestree to increase the poignancy of her spell; there was a subtle suggestion of that imaginative longing for the fulfilment of those vague youthful conceptions of happiness and life and love which stir in all young things, as the sap stirs in the trees in springtime and the bud forms under the leaves.