conversation he learnt that these were a memento of the Basque country, about which Miss Elvan talked with a very pretty enthusiasm.  Will went away, after all, in a dissatisfied mood.  Girls were to him merely a source of disquiet.  “If she be not fair for me—­” was his ordinary thought; and he had never yet succeeded in persuading himself that any girl, fair or not, was at all likely to conceive the idea of devoting herself to his happiness.  In this matter, an excessive modesty subdued him.  It had something to do with his holding so much apart from general society.

On the evening of the next day, there was a thunderous knock at Warburton’s flat, and in rushed Franks.

“You were at Ashtead yesterday,” he cried.

“I was.  What of that?”

“And you didn’t come to tell me about the Elvans!”

“About Miss Elvan, I suppose you mean?” said Will.

“Well, yes, I do.  I went there by chance this afternoon.  The two men were away somewhere,—­I found Mrs. Pomfret and that girl alone together.  Never had such a delightful time in my life!  But I say, Warburton, we must understand each other.  Are you—­do you—­I mean, did she strike you particularly?”

Will threw back his head and laughed.

“You mean that?” shouted the other, joyously.  “You really don’t care —­it’s nothing to you?”

“Why, is it anything to you?”

“Anything?  Rosamund Elvan is the most beautiful girl I ever saw, and the sweetest, and the brightest, and the altogether flooringest!  And, by heaven and earth, I’m resolved to marry her!”

CHAPTER 5

As he sat musing, The Art World still in his hand, Warburton could hear his friend’s voice ring out that audacious vow.  He could remember, too, the odd little pang with which he heard it, a half spasm of altogether absurd jealousy.  Of course the feeling did not last.  There was no recurrence of it when he heard that Franks had again seen Miss Elvan before she left Ashtead; nor when he learnt that the artist had been spending a day or two at Bath.  Less than a month after their first meeting, Franks won Rosamund’s consent.  He was frantic with exultation.  Arriving with the news at ten o’clock one night, he shouted and maddened about Warburton’s room until finally turned out at two in the morning.  His circumstances being what they were, he could not hope for marriage yet awhile; he must work and wait.  Never mind; see what work he would produce!  Yet it appeared to his friend that all through the next twelvemonth he merely wasted time, such work as he did finish being of very slight value.  He talked and talked, now of Rosamund, now of what he was going to do, until Warburton, losing patience, would cut him short with “Oh, go to Bath!”—­an old cant phrase revived for its special appropriateness in this connection.  Franks went to Bath far oftener than he could afford, money for his journey being generally borrowed from his long-enduring friend.