“Sandford, don’t go like this. You make me awfully anxious--I’m sure you’re ill. I can’t let you go out of my place, looking so dreadfully ill, without some one with you.” “Some one with me! I hope you don’t mean to insult me, Daniells. I am perfectly well--a little startled, but that’s all. I shall go and take a walk, and blow away the cobwebs, and--think it over. That’s the best thing. I’m much obliged to you, Daniells. Good-bye.” “Have a hansom, at least,” Daniells said. “No hansom,” Mr. Sandford answered, turning upon the dealer with a curious smile. He even laughed a little--low, but quite distinct. “No, I’ll have no hansom. Good-bye, Daniells, good-bye.” And in a minute he was gone. The picture dealer went out to the door after him, and followed him with his eyes until his figure was lost in the crowd. Daniells was alarmed. He blamed himself for his frankness. “I never thought he’d have taken it to heart like that,” he said to himself. “Yes, I did; or I might have done--he’s awful proud. But I’m ’asty. I can’t help it; I’m always doing things I’m sorry for. Anyhow, he must have found it out some time, sooner or later,” the dealer said to himself; and this philosophy silenced his fears. CHAPTER IV. Mr. Sandford knew nothing till he found himself in the Regent’s Park, not far from his house. He had passed through the crowds in the street with his life and thoughts suspended, feeling that to think was impossible, seeing only before him the line of the three pictures standing against the wall. They seemed to accompany him on his way, showing against the front of the houses wherever he turned his eyes. Three pictures, painted cheerfully, without a premonition, or any sense of failure, or a moment’s fear that they would ever stand with their faces against a dealer’s wall. One of them had been a great favourite with his wife. The youngest girl--little Mary--had sat for one of the figures, and Mrs. Sandford had not wished to let it go. “I wish we could afford to keep this,” she said; “it is like selling our own flesh and blood.” But most painters have to accustom themselves to that small trouble, and even she had laughed at herself. And now to think that it had never been sold at all--that it was unsaleable, oh, heaven! The sense of a dreadful humiliation, far more than was reasonable, filled the painter’s mind. The man whom he had always liked, but partly despised--Daniells, who was as ignorant as a pig, who knew a picture indeed when he saw it, but had not a notion why he liked it, nor could render a reason or tell how he knew one to be bad or another good--that he should be losing by his kindness, should be out of pocket, burdened by three “Sandfords” with their faces against the wall! Mr. Sandford’s gentle contempt came back upon him with a shock of humiliation and shame. To sneer at a man who had suffered by him, who had given money for his unsaleable work--a man who had thus shown himself a better man