Then she and her father departed.  Fenwick had felt their going as perhaps the sharpest pang in this intolerable winter.  But he had scarcely answered her letter.  What was there to say?  At least he had never asked her or her father for money—­had never owed Lord Findon a penny.  There was some small comfort in that.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, it was of money that he thought—­and must think—­night and day.

After his interview with the magnificent gentlemen in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he made his way wearily to a much humbler office in Bedford Row.  Here was a small solicitor to whom he had often resorted lately, under the constant pressure of his financial difficulties.  He spent an hour in this man’s room.  When he came out, he walked fast towards Oxford Street and the west, hardly conscious in his excitement of where he was going.  The lawyer he had just seen had for the first time mentioned the word ‘bankruptcy.’  ’I scarcely see, Mr. Fenwick, how you can avoid it.’

Well, it might come to that—­it might.  But he still had his six pictures—­time to finish two others that were now on hand—­and the exhibition.

It was with that he was now concerned.  He called on the manager of a small gallery near Hanover Square with whom he had already made an arrangement for the coming May—­paying a deposit on the rent—­early in the winter.  In his anxiety, he wished now to make the matter still clearer, to pay down the rest of the rent if need be.  He had the notes always in his breast-pocket, jealously hidden away, lest any other claim, amid the myriads which pressed upon him, should sweep them from him.

The junior partner in charge of the gallery and the shop of which it made part, received him very coldly.  The firm had long since regretted their bargain with a man whose pictures were not likely to sell, especially as they could have relet the gallery to much better advantage.  But their contract with Fenwick—­clinched by the deposit—­could not be evaded; so they were advised.

All, therefore, that the junior partner could do was to try to alarm Fenwick, as to the incidental expenses involved—­hanging, printing, service, etc.  But Fenwick only laughed.  ‘I shall see to that!’ he said, contemptuously.  ‘And my pictures will sell, I tell you,’ he added, raising his voice.  ’They’ll bring a profit both to you and to me.’

The individual addressed said nothing.  He was a tall, well-fed young man, in a faultless frock-coat, and Fenwick, as they stood together in the office—­the artist had not been offered a chair—­disliked him violently.

‘Well, shall I pay you the rest?’ said Fenwick, abruptly, turning to go, and fumbling at the same time for the pocket-book in which he kept the notes.

The other gave a slight shrug.

‘That’s just as you please, Mr. Fenwick.’

‘Well, here’s fifty, anyway,’ said Fenwick, drawing out a fifty-pound note and laying it on the table.