"You must have heard of him," said Sir Hugh, carefully replacing the candlestick. "Oh, yes, we have heard of him," said my uncle, looking at me. Sir Hugh did not appear to notice the meaning way in which my uncle spoke. "He is spending Christmas here," said Sir Hugh. "In fact he has been living at the Abbey for the last two months. He went to London this week to get some artistic material. He is painting a picture for me. "What is the subject?" my uncle asked. "I left that to him," Sir Hugh answered. "Artists naturally prefer not to be fettered in matters of that sort, and they always do best what they like best. But he calls this new picture----" "'Modesta, the Christian Martyr,'" I interrupted. "Yes," said Sir Hugh surprised. "How on earth did you know? I was not aware that he had told any one but me." "He told me himself," I explained. "We are friends of his. At least we met him at Rivoli last summer, and he told us he had a commission for a picture with leave to choose his own subject. You must be the man who gave him the commission he was referring to." "So you know him?" said the Baronet regretfully. "I am disappointed. I thought I had a pleasure in store for you, and I am forestalled. Yes; that's it. 'Modesta, the Christian Martyr,' is to be _the_ picture of the year. He stipulated that he should exhibit it before finally handing it over to me, and of course I was quite agreeable." "It was politic too," my uncle remarked. "A man will take more pains over a picture that all the critics will see than over one that will go straight into a private collection." "I suppose that is true," said Sir Hugh, "though Vasari is not the man to scamp his work. I have fitted up a studio for him in the Nuns' Tower, that grey tower connected with the east wing of the Abbey by a cloister. It's a lonely sort of place, but he seems to prefer it to any other room in the Abbey, and he certainly is free from interruption there." "Well, I hope for your sake the picture will be a success," said my uncle, suggesting that he did not care at all how it might affect the artist's career. "Do you think it will equal his last?" "I can't say. I haven't seen it." Then, noticing our surprise, Sir Hugh explained. "You see his studio is a sort of holy shrine into which only the high priest of art is allowed to enter. The door is closed to every one--even to _me_." The pomposity with which the good Baronet emphasised the last word was immense. "Well it is contrary to his usual practice," my uncle said drily. "We haven't found him backward in talking about his work, have we, Frank?" "I don't think modesty is a disease with him," I admitted. "Do you know whether he was as secretive about his 'Fall of Cæsar' before he sprung it on an admiring world?"