As he made his way discreetly among the little groups of people who strolled processionally along the gravel walks and beneath the trees, or disposed themselves in basket chairs upon the lawn, feeling himself vaguely exhilarated by the not too abstruse music of the posturing fiddlers, his eyes caressed by the soft glow of the Japanese lanterns, strung like antique jewelled necklets against the almost tangible blackness of the night, he found himself listening with an half-malicious amusement to the commonplace of the conversational formulae affected by the young world of society, the well-worn, patched-up questions, the anticipated answers.  It was very little changed since the time when he had not yet emancipated himself from the dreary bondage of such functions.  It was croquet then, lawn-tennis now; for the rest only the names were different.  Presently he encountered McAllister, a solitary wanderer like himself, and they found themselves seats before long in the darkest corner of the garden, where a few chairs had been placed, outside the radius of the lanterns, underneath a weeping willow.

“And they say painting doesn’t pay,” said the Scotchman, extending his long hands comprehensively, with a quiet chuckle.  “And I’m not saying that it does, mind you, when a man has notions like that queer, cantankerous devil Oswyn.  He wouldn’t make anything pay in this world.  But if a man’s clever and canny, and has the sense to see on which side his bread’s buttered ... why, it’s just easier than nothing.  And to think that the laddie isn’t even an Associate.”

“Yes.  I suppose he’s getting on pretty well,” suggested Rainham, with a lazy enjoyment of this frank worldliness.

“Getting on!  Doesn’t it look like it?  Isn’t he entertaining his friends like—­like a Rothschild?  You know, of course, that he has sold his Academy picture, and next year’s as well—­and four figures for each of them?”

“Yes; and he’s commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of the Hereditary Grand-Duchess of Oberschnitzelsteinwurst—­an undertaking, by the way, for which I don’t envy him.  Oh, Dick’s all right!  What have you got in the Academy this year, by the way?  I’m ashamed to say I haven’t been there yet.”

“You haven’t!  But you have seen Lightmark’s picture?  No?  Well, it’s a fine thing, and just as clever as——­ But, mind you, I’m not prepared to say that Oswyn wouldn’t have made something better out of it.”

“Yes,” said Rainham slowly, with the chill of the old misgiving about his heart, as he remembered the stormy encounter at the dock, with the haunting shadow of doubt in his mind, laboriously dismissed as an offence against his loyalty.  “It seems to me that Oswyn has more real genius in his little finger than Dick has in his whole body; I am sure of it.  It was a pity that they should both have chosen the same subject, especially as their ideas, as to colour and treatment and so on, are so much the same.  But, of course, Dick had a perfect right to finish and exhibit his picture, even if he knew that Oswyn was thinking of the same thing.”