Their parting from the recluse at his garden gate was friendly and natural. Mr. Quincunx reverted to his politest manner, and the artist’s good temper seemed quite restored. In retrospect, after the passing of a couple of days, spent by Dangelis in preparing the accessories of his Ariadne picture, and by Gladys in unpacking certain mysterious parcels telegraphed for to London, the American found himself recalling his visit to Dead Man’s Cottage with none but amiable feelings. The third morning which followed this visit, dawned upon Nevilton with peculiar propitiousness. The air was windless and full of delicious fragrance. The bright clear sunshine seemed to penetrate every portion of the spacious Elizabethan mansion and to turn its corridors and halls, filled with freshly plucked flowers, into a sort of colossal garden house. Dangelis rose that morning with a more than normal desire to plunge into his work. He was considerably annoyed, however, to find that Gladys had actually arranged to have Mr. Clavering invited to lunch and had gone so far as to add a pencilled scrawl of her own--she herself laughingly confessed as much--to her mother’s formal note, begging him to appear in the middle of the forenoon, as she had a “surprise” in store for him. The American’s anxiety to begin work as soon as possible with his attractive model, made him suffer miseries of impatience, while Gladys amused herself with her Ariadne draperies, making Lacrima dress and undress her twenty times, behind the screens of the studio. She appeared at last, however, and the artist, looking up at her from his canvas, was for the moment staggered by her beauty. The instinctive taste of her cousin’s Latin fingers was shown in the exquisite skill with which the classical folds of the dress she wore accentuated the natural charm of her young form.