The priest observed with cold attention her darkly-beautiful eyes and hair, her quickly-changing color, her modest grace of movement.  Slowly, and in evident agitation, she advanced to the door of the picture gallery—­and paused, as if she was afraid to open it.  Father Benwell heard her sigh to herself softly, “Oh, how shall I meet him?” She turned aside to the looking-glass over the fire-place.  The reflection of her charming face seemed to rouse her courage.  She retraced her steps, and timidly opened the door.  Lord Loring must have been close by at the moment.  His voice immediately made itself heard in the library.

“Come in, Stella—­come in!  Here is a new picture for you to see; and a friend whom I want to present to you, who must be your friend too—­Mr. Lewis Romayne.”

The door was closed again.  Father Benwell stood still as a statue in the recess, with his head down, deep in thought.  After a while he roused himself, and rapidly returned to the writing table.  With a roughness strangely unlike his customary deliberation of movement, he snatched a sheet of paper out of the case, and frowning heavily, wrote these lines on it:—­“Since my letter was sealed, I have made a discovery which must be communicated without the loss of a post.  I greatly fear there may be a woman in our way.  Trust me to combat this obstacle as I have combated other obstacles.  In the meantime, the work goes on.  Penrose has received his first instructions, and has to-day been presented to Romayne.”

He addressed this letter to Rome, as he had addressed the letter preceding it.  “Now for the woman!” he said to himself—­and opened the door of the picture gallery.

CHAPTER IV.

FATHER BENWELL HITS.

ART has its trials as well as its triumphs.  It is powerless to assert itself against the sordid interests of everyday life.  The greatest book ever written, the finest picture ever painted, appeals in vain to minds preoccupied by selfish and secret cares.  On entering Lord Loring’s gallery, Father Benwell found but one person who was not looking at the pictures under false pretenses.

Innocent of all suspicion of the conflicting interests whose struggle now centered in himself, Romayne was carefully studying the picture which had been made the pretext for inviting him to the house.  He had bowed to Stella, with a tranquil admiration of her beauty; he had shaken hands with Penrose, and had said some kind words to his future secretary—­and then he had turned to the picture, as if Stella and Penrose had ceased from that moment to occupy his mind.

“In your place,” he said quietly to Lord Loring, “I should not buy this work.”

“Why not?”

“It seems to me to have the serious defect of the modern English school of painting.  A total want of thought in the rendering of the subject, disguised under dexterous technical tricks of the brush.  When you have seen one of that man’s pictures, you have seen all.  He manufactures—­he doesn’t paint.”