The padrona was a little disturbed. She was overwhelmed by the praise, feeling all the sweetness of it; and she was pricked, and stung to smarting by the blame. It cost her a considerable effort to master herself, and to bring back her thoughts even to Laurie Renton. ‘You must not be too hard upon him,’ she said, with her voice a little tremulous. ‘A mind that has any energy in it must work in its own way.’ This was said half on Laurie’s account, no doubt, but also half on her own, after the assault she had sustained. ‘I think it would be best not to say too much about his big picture. He will read your disapproval in your eye.’ Mr. Welby shrugged his shoulders. ‘I doubt if a young fellow would take much interest in reading my eye. But he may read yours, perhaps,’ said the cynic, with a questioning glance, which Mrs. Severn was too much occupied to perceive, much less understand. And this was about the end of the consultation. They might admire and warn, and hold up beacons before the unwary youth, but there is no Act of Parliament forbidding a young painter to purchase for himself canvases six feet by ten, and to paint, or attempt to paint, heroic pictures thereupon. His advisers might regret and might do their best to turn him to wiser ways, but that was all; and the question was not urgent enough to demand the sacrifice of the very best hours of a November day,--which, heaven knows! are short enough for a painter’s requirements, in a district so rapidly reached by the rising fog from the city as Fitzroy Square.