CHAPTER III

It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to the Sylvesters.  Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a man who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was an opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained by young barristers even when, as in Sylvester’s case, they have already designs upon a snug constituency.

Sylvester began by giving his protege a commission to paint his mother’s portrait, and before this work was finished a very appreciable degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester family and the young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying a woman-of-the-world’s passion for small-talk and fashionable intelligence—­judiciously culled from the columns of the daily newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and paste-brush.

With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task.  She was a girl who had from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at first, had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an object of his patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him on his own exalted level.  He had been known, in his earlier years, to speak somewhat contemptuously of “artists”; and, indeed, his want of sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve occasion for much wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.

However, brotherly rule over a girl’s opinions is apt to be disestablished when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and after her emancipation from the schoolroom and short frocks, Miss Eve began to think it was time that she should be allowed to entertain and express views of her own.  And after her first ball, an occasion on which her programme had speedily been besieged, and the debutante marked as dangerous by the observant mothers of marriageable sons and daughters—­after this important function, even Charles had begun to regard his pretty sister with a certain amount of deference.  He certainly had reason to congratulate himself on having so attractive a young person to pour out his coffee and compose his “buttonholes” before he started for chambers in the morning.  Eve was at an age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion fostered by judicious walks and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded to the baneful influence of late dinners and the other orgies which society conducts in an unduly-heated atmosphere.  Her figure was still almost childishly slim, but graceful, and straight enough to defy criticism in the ball-room or the saddle.  Her eyes were gray, with a curious, starry expression in their depths, which always suggested that the smile which was so often on her lips was quite ready to exaggerate the dimples in her cheeks.  Her hair was refractory, from her own point of view; but Lightmark found the tangled brown masses, which she wore gathered into a loose knot high at the back of her shapely head, entirely charming, and suggestive, in a way, of one of Lancret’s wood nymphs.