Phil had something of the same cool friendliness of deportment, and, being used to the unexpected advent of guests at all hours, was quite ready to welcome him. He had the same faculty for making noticeable speeches, too, and was amiable, though languid and _débonnaire_, and by no means prone to ceremony. In ten minutes after he had entered the room Ralph Gowan understood, as by magic, that, little as the world was to these people, they had, in their Bohemian fashion, learned through sheer tact to comprehend and tolerate its weaknesses. He examined the pictures on the walls and in the folios, and now and then found himself roused into something more than ordinary admiration. But he was disappointed in one thing. He failed in accomplishing the object of his visit. After she had seen that Phil and the paintings occupied his attention to some extent, Dolly left them. “I was beginning to think about pies and puddings when you came,” she said, “and I must go back to them. Saturday is the only day Lady Augusta leaves me, in which to improve in branches of domestic usefulness,” with an iniquitous imitation of her ladyship's manner. After which she went down to the kitchen again and plunged into culinary detail with renewed vigor, thinking of the six-roomed house in the suburbs, and the green sofa which was to fit into the alcove in the front parlor, growing quite happy over the mental picture, in blissful unconsciousness of the fact that a train had been that day laid, and that a spark would be applied that very night through the medium of a simple observation made by Phil to her lover. “Gowan was here this morning, Grif, and Dolly brought him into the studio. He's not a bad sort of fellow for a Philistine, and he seems to know something about pictures. I should n't be surprised if he came again.” CHAPTER IV. ~ A LILY OF THE FIELD. THIS was the significant and poetic appellation which at once attached itself to Ralph Gowan after his first visit to the studio in Bloomsbury Place, and, as might have been expected, it was a fancy of Dolly's, the affixing of significant titles being one of her _fortes_. “The lilies of the field,” she observed, astutely, “are a distinct class. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Yes, my young friends, Mr. Ralph Gowan is a lily of the field.”