‘I have brought it to read to you,’ said Laurie, ‘if you can take the trouble to listen. I am afraid it is dreadful trash. The truth is, I was a little excited about it last night; and now, this morning----’ He was abashed, poor fellow, and explanatory, and very anxious to impress upon her all the excuses there were for its imperfection. Somehow, everything had a different aspect in the morning! He went on, playing with the paper; and then, making a dash at it, began to read. It was not very good, to tell the truth. There was an attempt to be funny in it, which was not very successful, and there was an effort after that airy style which so many young writers attempt unsuccessfully; and then there was a rather grand conclusion, full of big words, which Laurie had risen into just as he heard the first cry of the milkman, and felt that it was necessary to come to an effective close. The padrona went on painting very steadily at her easel. She had the notion, which women so often entertain, that a young man, with all those advantages which a man has over her own sex, could do anything he chose to do,--and especially Laurie, her own _protégé_; and yet here, it was evident, was something he could not do. The writing in the ‘Sword,’ though it was said to be nothing remarkable, was not like Laurie’s writing. Poor Laurie’s narrative, instead of the sober little history it ought to have been, read like a bad joke. He might have been sneering at Suffolk for anything the reader could have made out, and patronising him oppressively at the same moment. Never woman was in a more uncomfortable position than was Mrs. Severn standing at her easel. Laurie himself was so conscious of its weakness and flatness that he attempted, by dramatic tricks with his voice, to give it effect. ‘Good heavens! Suffolk will go mad,’ the padrona said to herself; and then there was a word or two about Mr. Welby. And the author sat breathless, trembling, yet with a smile of complacency on his face, to hear her opinion. Poor Laurie! whom she had already driven to the utmost bounds of patience in respect to his picture! She shivered as she stopped to arrange the drapery on the little lay figure. Certainly, to be Laurie’s adviser-in-chief was a post which had its difficulties as well as its pleasures. ‘Is that all?’ she said, when an awful pause of a minute in duration warned her that the moment to deliver her judgment had come. ‘All!’ said Laurie, flattered by the question, and beginning to take courage. ‘I should have thought you had found it quite long enough.’ ‘Well, perhaps it is long enough,’ said the trembling critic; ‘but still I think there might be another paragraph. You have not said anything about the German sketches, for instance, which were so clever; and you know, if I am to be a critic, you must let me find fault. There are one or two turns of expression. What is that you say about Mr. Suffolk having lived out of the world?’