or the margin of a little square catalogue; in another an interested dealer used his best endeavours to rivet a patron’s attention on the merits of his speculative purchase.  The providers of the feast were not so much in evidence as their wives and daughters; the artist often affects to despise the occasion, and contents himself with a general survey—­frequently limited to his own pictures—­on Varnishing Day.

The Hanging Committee had dealt kindly with Lightmark’s Academy picture.  When it was passed in review before these veterans, after a long procession of inanely smiling portraits, laboured, wooden landscapes, and preternaturally developed heroes, the expression of satiated boredom and damnation of draughts, which variously pervaded the little row of arbitrators, was for a moment dissipated.  There was a movement of chairs, followed by an exchange of complimentary murmurs; and the picture was finally niched into a space which happened to fit it between two life-size portraits on the line in one of the smaller rooms.

On the fashionable afternoon Lightmark’s work was never without the little admiring crowd which denotes a picture of more than usual interest.  The canvas, which had loomed so large in the new studio in Grove Road, was smaller than many of its neighbours, but its sombre strength of colour, relieved by the pale, silvery gold of its wide frame, and the white dresses of the ladies portrayed in the pictures on either side, made it at once noticeable.

The critics next day referred to it as a nocturne in black and gold, and more than one of the daily journals contained an enthusiastic description of the subject—­an ocean-steamer entering a Thames graving-dock at night-time, with torch-light effects; and a mist on the river.

Eve fluttered delightedly from room to room with her mother, recurring always to the neighbourhood of her husband’s picture, and receiving congratulations by the score.  It had been a disappointment to her when her husband, at the eleventh hour, expressed his inability to be present; but even Mrs. Sylvester’s remonstrances had failed to move him, and the two ladies had come under the Colonel’s escort.

“I didn’t know your husband was so nervous,” said Mrs. Dollond sceptically.  “Is this the effect of matrimony?...  Oh, Mrs. Lightmark, do look at that creature in peacock blue!  Did you ever see such a gown?  Have you seen my husband’s pictures?  He’s got one in every room, nearly.  Between you and me, they’re all of them pretty bad; but so long as people don’t know any better, and buy them, what does it matter?  Ah, Colonel Lightmark, how do you do?  Of course I’ve seen your nephew’s picture.  I’ve been saying all sorts of nice things about it to Mrs. Lightmark.”

“It’s pretty good, I suppose,” suggested the Colonel radiantly.  “Have you seen the Outcry this week?  There’s no end of a good notice about it, and about your husband’s pictures, too.”