There is in it the most exquisite, tragical, heart-rending pleasure. Not that one would not regret it with all one’s heart and soul, and do everything that one could, like Lancelot, to turn aside the rising passion. But even to Lancelot was not that self-offering of the lily-maid, though he would have given his life to prevent it, an exquisite sweetness and sorrowfulness, a combination of the deepest pain and gratification of which the soul is capable? Such an act raises the doer of it,--be it man or woman,--out of the level of ordinary humanity, and envelopes the receiver of the offering in the same maze of tenderest, most melancholy glory. Something of this feeling the padrona had for her Laurie, who had given her his life like a flower, without price or hope of price in this world. And yet, I think, temperament was at the bottom of it, and the sacrifice, and the sweetness of it, and all the subdued tones of his existence which had followed, were more to him than the brighter daylight colours of ordinary existence, even though he might feel the absence of those fuller tones now and then, once in a way. But to some extent Laurie acted upon Mrs. Severn’s advice. As luck would have it, his old rooms at Kensington Gore, having passed through many hands in the interval, proved to be vacant about this time. And Laurie secured them, and fitted up all his old fittings, his carved brackets and velvet hangings, and all the contrivances that had been so pleasant to him; and had his bow-window once more full of flowers, and looked out once more upon the gay park and the stream of carriages as from an opera-box. But the ladies who looked up at his window once had passed away and given place to others, who knew not Laurie, or had forgotten him, and asked each other who was the man who stared so from that window? And from Kensington Gore to Fitzroy Square is a very long walk to be taken every day. And though, to be sure, there are plenty of studios about Kensington, into which an amateur may drop, yet these are grand studios, flanked by drawing-rooms, with ladies to be called upon, and the flavour of society about. It is true that Suffolk lives in that refined neighbourhood now, having made very rapid progress since the days when Mr. Rich bought ‘The Angles,’ and Laurie put the studio in order for the reception of the patron, and got cobwebs on his coat. ‘They were very nice, those old days, after all!’ Mrs. Suffolk says, when they talk it over; but they have now a spruce man-servant,--more spruce, though not so well instructed as old Forrester, Mr. Welby’s man,--to move a picture that has to be moved, and open the door to the patrons and patronesses. And Laurie for one, to whom a man-servant is not the badge of grandeur and success which it is to Mr. Suffolk, rather preferred, I fear, the state of things in the old days, when they all clustered about Fitzroy Square.