“I expect they’ve stayed to tea.  I haven’t seen old Morewood for no end of a time.  Gad!  I’ll go to tea.”

And he got into a hansom and went, wondering with some amusement how Claudia had persuaded Morewood to paint her.  It turned out, however, that the transaction was of a purely commercial character.  Rickmansworth, having been very successful at the race-meeting above referred to, had been minded to give his sister a present, and she had chosen her own head on a canvas.  The price offered was such that Morewood could not refuse; but he had in the course of the sitting greatly annoyed Claudia by mentioning incidentally that her face did not interest him and was, in fact, such a face as he would never have painted but for the pressure of penury.

“Why doesn’t it interest you?” asked she, in pardonable irritation.

“I don’t know.  It’s—­but I dare say it’s my fault,” he replied, in that tone which clearly implies the opposite of what is asserted.

“It must be, I think,” said Claudia gently.  “You see, it interests so many people, Mr. Morewood.”

“Not artists.”

“Dear me! no!”

“Whom, then?”

“Oh, the nobility and gentry.”

“And clergy?”

A shadow passed across her face—­but a fleeting shadow.

“You paint very slowly,” she said.

“I do when I am not inspired.  I hate painting young women.”

“Oh!  Why?”

“They’re not meant to be painted; they’re meant to be kissed.”

“Does the one exclude the other?”

“That’s for you to say,” said Morewood, with a grin.

“I think they’re meant to be painted by some people, and kissed by other people.  Let the cobbler stick to his last, Mr. Morewood.”

“I wonder if you’ll stick to your last,” said Morewood.

Claudia decided that she had better not see this joke, if the contemptible quip could be so called.  It was very impertinent, and she had no retort ready.  She revenged herself by declaring her sitting at an end, and inviting herself and her aunt to stay to tea.

“I’ve got no end of work to do,” Morewood protested.

“Surely tea is compris?” she asked, with raised eyebrows.  “We shan’t stay more than an hour.”

Morewood groaned, but ordered tea.  After all, it was too dark to paint, and—­well, she was amusing.

Eugene arrived almost at the same moment as tea.  Morewood was glad to see him, and went as near showing it as he ever did.  Lady Julia received him with effusion, Claudia with dignity.

“I have pursued you from Grosvenor Square, Lady Julia,” he said.  “I didn’t come to see old Morewood, you know.”

“As much as to see me, I dare say,” said Lady Julia in an aside.

Eugene protested with a shake of the head, and Morewood carried him off to have such inspection of the picture as artificial light could afford.