III. A PATRON OF ART 42 IV. SUCCESS 64 V. A DISCOVERY 79 VI. LAURIE’S FATE 96 VII. A FULL STOP 113 VIII. YOUNG FRANK 133 IX. NELLY RICH 152 X. BROTHERLY ADVICE 174 XI. THE MUSIC-ROOM 186 XII. A PRISONER 198 XIII. SUNDAY 210 XIV. FRANK’S PERPLEXITIES 234 XV. PROGRESS 256 XVI. MRS. RENTON’S CALL 271 XVII. A STEP THE WRONG WAY 286 XVIII. WAVERING 306 THE THREE BROTHERS. CHAPTER I. PLAY. It must be admitted that the counsel thus bestowed upon Laurie in respect to his work had rather a discouraging than a stimulating effect upon him. It disgusted him, no doubt, with Edith and his big canvas, but it did not fill him, as it was intended to do, with enthusiasm for Clipstone Street, and his other opportunities of legitimate work. He made it an excuse for doing nothing, which was unfortunate, after so much trouble had been taken about him. Perhaps, on the whole, it would have been better to have let him have his way. The padrona herself thought so, though she had not been able to refrain from interfering when she had the opportunity. The Square, and the adjacent regions, had pronounced almost unanimously that the sketch was a very clever sketch; but, notwithstanding, deprecated with one voice the big canvas, and the ambitious work. ‘I did it, and you see I have not made much of it,’ said Suffolk. ‘If I thought I could make as much of it as you have done, I should go in for it to-morrow,’ cried Laurie, with an enthusiasm for which the painter’s wife could have hugged him. ‘But, dear Mr. Renton, if you would but advise him to take simpler subjects!’ Mrs. Suffolk said, with her pathetic voice. Suffolk was a man of genius, as even old Welby admitted, and slowly, by degrees, the profession itself was beginning to be awake to his merits; but as for the British public, it knew nothing of the painter, except that up to this moment he had been hung down on the floor, or up at the roof, in the Academy’s exhibition, and sneered at in the ‘Sword.’ This was what came of high art.