shame that this was the sort of picturesque tragedy she would have expected from Garth Dalmain. But the man who had surprised her by his dignified acquiescence in her decision, continued to surprise her by the strength with which he silently accepted it as final and kept out of her way. Jane had not probed the depth of the wound she had inflicted. Never once was his departure connected, in the minds of others, with her arrival. There was always some excellent and perfectly natural reason why he had been obliged to leave, and he was openly talked of and regretted, and Jane heard all the latest "Dal stories," and found herself surrounded by the atmosphere of his exotic, beauty-loving nature. And there was usually a girl--always the loveliest of the party--confidentially pointed out to Jane, by the rest, as a certainty, if only Dal had had another twenty-four hours of her society. But the girl herself would appear quite heart-whole, only very full of an evidently delightful friendship, expressing all Dal's ideas on art and colour, as her own, and confidently happy in an assured sense of her own loveliness and charm and power to please. Never did he leave behind him traces which the woman who loved him regretted to find. But he was always gone--irrevocably gone. Garth Dalmain was not the sort of man to wait on the door-mat of a woman's indecision. Neither did this Jack of hers break his crown. His portrait of Pauline Lister, painted six months after the Shenstone visit, had proved the finest bit of work he had as yet accomplished. He had painted the lovely American, in creamy white satin, standing on a dark oak staircase, one hand resting on the balustrade, the other, full of yellow roses, held out towards an unseen friend below. Behind and above her shone a stained-glass window, centuries old, the arms, crest, and mottoes of the noble family to whom the place belonged, shining thereon in rose-coloured and golden glass. He had wonderfully caught the charm and vivacity of the girl. She was gaily up-to-date, and frankly American, from the crown of her queenly little head, to the point of her satin shoe; and the suggestiveness of placing her in surroundings which breathed an atmosphere of the best traditions of England's ancient ancestral homes, the fearless wedding of the new world with the old, the putting of this sparkling gem from the new into the beautiful mellow setting of the old and there showing it at its best,--all this was the making of the picture. People smiled, and said the painter had done on canvas what he shortly intended doing in reality; but the tie between artist and sitter never grew into anything closer than a pleasant friendship, and it was the noble owner of the staircase and window who eventually persuaded Miss Lister to remain in surroundings which suited her so admirably.