“Oh dear no, though of course she calls herself ‘Madame’ like the rest of them—­Madame Vavasour.  I have reason, however, to believe that her real name is Flink—­Elena Flink.  And I should say—­very much on the look-out for a husband; and meanwhile very much courted by boys—­who go to what she calls her ‘evenings.’  It is odd, the taste that some youths have for these elderly Circes.”

“Elderly?” said Doris, busy the while with her own preparations.  “I was hoping for something young and beautiful!”

“Young?—­no!—­an unmistakable thirty-five.  Beautiful?  Well, wait till you see her ...  H’m—­that shoulder won’t do!”—­Doris had just placed a preliminary sketch of one of her “subjects” under his eyes—­“and that bit of perspective in the corner wants a lot of seeing to.  Look here!” The old Academician, brought up in the spirit of Ingres—­“le dessin, c’est la probite!—­le dessin, c’est l’honneur!”—­fell eagerly to work on the sketch, and Doris watched.

They were both absorbed, when there was a knock at the door.  Doris turned hastily, expecting to see the model.  Instead of which there entered, in response to Bentley’s “Come in!” a girl of four or five and twenty, in a blue linen dress and a shady hat, who nodded a quiet “Good afternoon” to the artist, and proceeded at once with an air of business to a writing-table at the further end of the studio, covered with papers.

“Miss Wigram,” said the artist, raising his voice, “let me introduce you to my niece, Mrs. Meadows.”

The girl rose from her chair again and bowed.  Then Doris saw that she had a charming tired face, beautiful eyes on which she had just placed spectacles, and soft brown hair framing her thin cheeks.

“A novelty since you were here,” whispered Bentley in Doris’s ear.  “She’s an accountant—­capital girl!  Since these Liberal budgets came along, I can’t keep my own accounts, or send in my own income-tax returns—­dash them!  So she does the whole business for me—­pays everything—­sees to everything—­comes once a week.  We shall all be run by the women soon!”

* * * * *

The studio had grown very quiet.  Through some glass doors open to the garden came in little wandering winds which played with some loose papers on the floor, and blew Doris’s hair about her eyes as she stooped over her easel, absorbed in her drawing.  Apparently absorbed:  her subliminal mind, at least, was far away, wandering on a craggy Scotch moor.  A lady on a Scotch pony—­she understood that Lady Dunstable often rode with the shooters—­and a tall man walking beside her, carrying, not a gun, but a walking stick:—­that was the vision in the crystal.  Arthur was too bad a shot to be tolerated in the Dunstable circle; had indeed wisely announced from the beginning that he was not to be included among the guns.  All the more time for conversation, the give and take of wits, the pleasures of the intellectual tilting-ground; the whole watered by good wine, seasoned with the best of cooking, and lapped in the general ease of a house where nobody ever thought of such a vulgar thing as money except to spend it.