Doran remained the firm friend of the family.  Local talk had inspired Mrs. Mallard with a prejudice against him, but substantial services mitigated this, and the widow was in course of time less uneasy at her son’s being practically under the guardianship of this singular man of business.  Mallard, after preliminary training, was sent to the studio of a young artist whom Doran greatly admired, Cullen Banks, then struggling for the recognition he was never to enjoy, death being beforehand with him.  Mrs. Mallard was given to understand that no expenses were involved save those of the lad’s support in Manchester, where Banks lived, and Mallard himself did not till long after know that his friend had paid the artist a fee out of his own pocket.  Two things did Mallard learn from Doran himself which were to have a marked influence on his life—­a belief that only in landscape can a painter of our time hope to do really great work, and a limitless contempt of the Royal Academy.  In Manchester he made the acquaintance of several people with whom Doran was familiar, among them Edward Spence, then in the shipping-office, and Jacob Bush Bradshaw, well on his way to making a fortune out of silk.  On Banks’s death, Mallard, now nearly twenty-one, went to London for a time.  His patrimony was modest, but happily, if the capital remained intact, sufficient to save him from the cares that degrade and waste a life.  His mother and sisters had also an income adequate to their simple habits.

In the meantime, Mrs. Doran was dead.  After giving birth to a daughter, she fell into miserable health; her husband took her abroad, and she died in Germany.  Thereafter Sowerby Bridge saw no more of its bugbear; Doran abandoned commerce and became a Bohemian in earnest—­save that his dinner was always assured.  He wandered over Europe; he lived with Bohemian society in every capital; he kept adding to his collection of pictures (stored in a house at Woolwich, which he freely lent as an abode to a succession of ill-to-do artists); and finally he was struck with paralysis whilst conducting to their home the widow and child of a young painter who had suddenly died in the Ardennes.  The poor woman under his protection had to become his guardian.  He was brought to the house at Woolwich, and there for several months lay between life and death.  A partial recovery followed, and he was taken to the Isle of Wight, where, in a short time, a second attack killed him.

His child, Cecily, was twelve years old.  For the last five years she had been living in the care of Mrs. Elgar at Manchester.  This lady was an intimate friend of Mrs. Doran’s family, and in entrusting his child to her, Doran had given a strong illustration of one of the singularities of his character.  Though by no means the debauchee that Sowerby Bridge declared him, he was not a man of conventional morality; yet, in the case of people who were in any way entrusted to his care, he showed a curious severity of practice.