When, on the Tuesday afternoon, the two young men appeared in Mrs Palmer's handsome drawing-room, it was full of other visitors, and their entertainment fell at first to Florella's share. Her figure, as she sat a little apart by a table covered with the usual knick-knacks and flowers, had a harmonious and pictorial effect which caught Guy's fancy and remained in his memory. She was still very like Constancy, but with softened tints; hair and eyes had not the same bright chestnut hue, but were of a dim shady brown; she was paler, and though her young outlines were plump and full, they had an indescribable grace and softness. She had Constancy's straight brows and square forehead; but the eyes beneath were of another but equally modern type, seeking, longing, as the eyes of Fiametta or of the Blessed Damozel herself, but with this difference: they were happy as if in faith that a good answer waited their questioning. Florella did not talk, or learn, or do, as much as Constancy; but she knew all about learning and doing, and, in a girlish way, lived in the face of the questions of her time. She had one gift, too, which was likely to bring her much joy, and to this, after a few commonplaces, Cuthbert turned the conversation. "And your painting, Miss Vyner? Has it been getting on?" "Yes," said Florella, "I have been having lessons." "May we see?" Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour. The execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces. A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, "A tiptoe for a flight," had the summer breeze blowing through them; "Pure lilies of eternal peace," had a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested "airs of heaven," and "A bit of green" was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk, in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it. "Why, that's just how flowers look against smoke," said Guy. "They _glare_ with brightness." "Ah, that's what I meant!" said Florella, pleased. "Do you draw, Mr Waynflete? You are fond of pictures?" "I can't draw," said Guy; "but I can _write down_ faces in pen-and-ink outline. I can't make pictures. I don't think I enjoy them." "Waynflete likes music," said Cuthbert; "that is more in his line." "Tunes often put drawings into my head," said Florella, simply. "The time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete," she added. "Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very difficult sentiment to convey in a flower! I never could manage it." As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer caught the name.