“You don’t know the Campagna, yet,” remarked Madeline, finding that the other kept silence.  “Of course, you can’t appreciate the marvellous truthfulness of this impression; but it gives you new emotions, doesn’t it?”

Mrs. Lessingham would have permitted herself to reply with a pointed affirmative.  Cecily was too considerate of others’ feelings for that, yet had not the habit of smooth falsehood.

“I am not very familiar with this kind of work,” she said.  “Please let me just look and think, and tell me your own thoughts about each.”

Madeline was not displeased.  Already she had discovered that in most directions Miss Doran altogether exceeded her own reach, and that it was not safe to talk conscious nonsense to her.  The tone of modesty seemed unaffected, and, as Madeline had reasons for trying to believe in Clifford Marsh, it gratified her to feel that here at length she might tread firmly and hold her own.  The examination of the drawings proceeded, with the result that Cecily’s original misgiving was strongly confirmed.  What would Ross Mallard say?  Mallard’s own work was not of the impressionist school, and he might suffer prejudice to direct him; but she had a conviction of how his remarks would sound were this portfolio submitted to him.  Genius—­ scarcely.  And if not, then assuredly the other thing, and that in flagrant degree.

Most happily, the dinner-bell came with its peremptory interruption.

“I must see them again to-morrow,” said Cecily, in her pleasantest voice.

At table, the ladies were in a majority.  Mr. Bradshaw was the only man past middle life.  Next in age to him came Mr. Musselwhite, who looked about forty, and whose aquiline nose, high forehead, light bushy whiskers, and air of vacant satisfaction, marked him as the aristocrat of the assembly.  This gentleman suffered under a truly aristocratic affliction—­the ever-reviving difficulty of passing his day.  Mild in demeanour, easy in the discharge of petty social obligations, perfectly inoffensive, he came and went like a vivified statue of gentlemanly ennui.  Every morning there arrived for him a consignment of English newspapers; these were taken to his bedroom at nine o’clock, together with a cup of chocolate.  They presumably occupied him until he appeared in the drawing-room, just before the hour of luncheon, when, in spite of the freshness of his morning attire, he seemed already burdened by the blank of time, always sitting down to the meal with an audible sigh of gratitude.  Invariably he addressed to his neighbour a remark on the direction of the smoke from Vesuvius.  If the neighbour happened to be uninformed in things Neapolitan, Mr. Musselwhite seized the occasion to explain at length the meteorologic significance of these varying fumes.  Luncheon over, he rose like one who is summoned to a painful duty; in fact, the great task of the day was before him—­the struggle with time until the hour of dinner.  You