“I must have seen the girl at the studio,” he said, “when Lightmark was painting her.  It’s certainly a striking likeness, and that’s what astonished me, you know.  Almost like seeing a ghost.  Ah, that little fellow used to sit for Lightmark in Rome—­little sunburnt ruffian.  We picked him up on the Ghetto, almost starving, and he got quite an artistic connection before we left.  He was positively growing too fat; prosperity spoiled him as a model.”

“Really?” said Eve listlessly.  “I don’t think I want to look at any more drawings; one can have too much of a good thing, and it must be time for us to go.  We’re dining out, and Charles doesn’t like dressing in a hurry.  Yes, mamma is buttoning her gloves.  Good-bye, Mr. Rainham.  Shall we see you again before we go to Switzerland?  Ah, well, let’s hope so.  Au revoir, Mr. Lightmark.  If you really think it’s worth while for me to give you a solitary sitting next week——­”

“If you would be so good.  You see, I should have some ideas to go on with.  Don’t I deserve some reward, too, for allowing Rainham to monopolize you all the afternoon?  And if you don’t give me a sitting now, I’m afraid you will forget all about it when you come back to town; whereas, if we make a beginning, you will have to see it through—­you will be compromised.”

“What a stupid expression!” thought Mrs. Sylvester as the carriage rolled along the Kensington highroad.

Charles was unusually silent during the drive.  The subject which occupied his thoughts was not one which he would have dreamed of ventilating even with his mother, and Eve’s presence seemed to render the faintest allusion to it impracticable.

He had no great affection or even regard for Philip Rainham, whom he contemplated with that undefined disdain which a younger man so often feels for one who is too old to be on his own level, and too young to inspire reverence.  The half-pitying regard which Mrs. Sylvester bestowed on the man who had been to her husband as a very dear younger brother had never furthered Rainham’s advancement in her son’s favour; and the manner in which Eve had centred her childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that quarter.  Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester’s vague dislike had been so undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was, however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man’s startled voice drew the questioning eyes upon his embarrassment, the judicial mind had been able to plume itself upon the penetration which had enabled it to detect something of doubtful odour about him from the first.  “Kitty!” That word might explain so much—­Rainham’s long sojourns away from his business, for example.

Charles looked at Eve and frowned.  Decidedly, thought the young moralist, the old intimacy must be discouraged.  Nor did the fact that Rainham had been the source of his first brief, as well as of subsequent others, though it was not forgotten, suggest the advisability of a compromise; he even began to take a certain pride in the determination with which he was bringing himself to contemplate the sacrifice of so useful a friendship.