The newspaper cutting showed an item of news interesting alike to the fashionable and the artistic world.  Mr. Norbert Franks, the young painter whose Academy picture had been so much discussed, was about to paint the portrait of Lady Rockett, recently espoused wife of Sir Samuel Rockett, the Australian millionaire.  As every one knew, Lady Rockett had made a brilliant figure in the now closing Season, and her image had been in all the society journals.  Mr. Franks might be congratulated on this excellent opportunity for the display of his admirable talent as an exponent of female beauty.—­ “Exponent” was the word.

CHAPTER 20

In these summer days, whilst Norbert Franks was achieving popularity, success in humbler guise came to the humorous and much-enduring artist at Walham Green.  For a year or two, Bertha Cross had spent what time she could spare upon the illustration of a quaint old story-book, a book which had amused her own childhood, and still held its place in her affection.  The work was now finished; she showed it to a publisher of her acquaintance, who at once offered to purchase it on what seemed to Bertha excellent terms.  Of her own abilities she thought very modestly in deed, and had always been surprised when any one consented to pay—­oftener in shillings than in pounds—­for work which had cost her an infinity of conscientious trouble; now, however, she suspected that she had done something not altogether bad, and she spoke of it in a letter to Rosamund Elvan, still in the country of the Basques.

“As you know,” Rosamund replied, “I have never doubted that you would make a success one day, for you are wonderfully clever, and only need a little more self-confidence in making yourself known.  I wish I could feel anything like so sure of earning money.  For I shall have to, that is now certain.  Poor father, who gets weaker and weaker, talked to us the other day about what we could expect after his death; and it will be only just a little sum for each of us, nothing like enough to invest and live upon.  I am working at my water-colours, and I have been trying pastel—­there’s no end of good material here.  When the end comes—­and it can’t be long—­I must go to London, and see whether my things have any market value.  I don’t like the prospect of life in a garret on bread and water—­ by myself, that is.  You know how joyfully, gladly, proudly, I would have accepted it, under other circumstances.  If I had real talent myself—­but I feel more than doubtful about that.  I pray that I may not fall too low.  Can I trust you to overwhelm me with scorn, if I seem in danger of doing vulgar work?”

Bertha yielded to the temptations of a later summer rich in warmth and hue, and made little excursions by herself into the country, leaving home before her mother was up in the morning, and coming back after sunset.  Her sketching materials and a packet of sandwiches were but a light burden; she was a good walker; and the shilling or two spent on the railway, which formerly she could not have spared, no longer frightened her.