which ran along the pale-green distempered walls; and more were stacked in the corners—­some in portfolios, and some with their dusty backs exposed to view.  The palette which he had been using lay, like a great fantastic leaf, upon the table, amid a chaos of broken crayons, dingy stumps, photographs of sitters, pellets of bread, disreputable colour-tubes, and small bottles of linseed-oil, varnish, and turpentine.  A sketch for Mrs. Sylvester’s portrait, in crayons, was propped against the foot of an easel (Lightmark hoped that her son might buy it for his chambers); the canvas which he had prepared against the much-delayed sitting due from Miss Sylvester exposed its blank surface on another.  A tall Japanese jar full of purple and yellow irises, a tribute to his expected guests, stood on the dusty black stove.

He had barely had time to arrange the borrowed tea-things, and to set a kettle on a little spirit-lamp behind the screen, when Mrs. Dollond and her husband were announced.  He threw his black sombrero somewhat theatrically into a corner, and advanced with effusion to meet them.  Mrs. Dollond had taken a decided interest in the young painter ever since the delightfully uncandid reflection of her by no means youthful beauty, which he had exhibited at the Grosvenor, had provoked so much comment among her friends.

She was a plump, little, fair-haired woman, with blue eyes, a very pink and white complexion, small hands, and a passion for dress with which people who had known her before her marriage, as a slim maiden devoted to sage-green draperies and square-toed shoes, declined to credit her, until they were told that she had, to put it plainly, grown fat—­a development which compelled her to give up aestheticism and employ a modiste.

Her husband, who followed her into the room, carrying her impedimenta, wore the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected to admire the work of an outsider.  He was the abject slave of his good-natured wife—­she was good-natured, in spite of her love of scandal—­and his only fault from her point of view, and his greatest one in the eyes of people in general, lay in an unfortunate habit of thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, which persons who are apt to find themselves in the position of critic should at any cost eradicate.  Luckily, his benevolence was such that these outspoken comments were never really virulent, and not often offensive.

Mrs. Dollond seated herself smilingly on the least rickety chair, disposed of her veil with one neatly-gloved hand, and prepared a tortoiseshell eyeglass for action with the other.

“What a charming portrait!” she said, pointing with her plump index-finger to the sketch of Mrs. Sylvester.  “Do I know the lady, I wonder?  Oh!  I do believe it’s that Mrs. Sylvester.”

“Yes,” said Lightmark.  “If you remember, you introduced me to her at the Academy soiree last year.  I expect her here this afternoon, with her daughter.  I am going to paint Miss Sylvester’s portrait.”