hink I might have been rather--rather a fifth wheel?"
suggested Rainham feebly, entirely ignoring Mrs. Sylvester's remark,
to which, indeed, he attached no special meaning.

"Spare our blushes, old man," expostulated Dick. "It would have been
awfully jolly. You would have been such a companion for Charles, you
know," he added, with a malicious glance over his shoulder. "Oh
dear! fog again. I think I must release you now, Eve. Tell me what
you think of the portrait, now that I've worked in the background,
Philip. Mrs. Sylvester, now don't you think I was right about the
flowers?"

There was, in fact, a charming, almost virginal delicacy and
freshness of air and tone about the picture. The girl's simple,
white dress, with only--the painter had so far prevailed over the
milliner,--only a suggestion of bright ribands at throat and waist;
the quaint chippendale chair, the sombre Spanish leather screen,
which formed the background, and the pot of copper-coloured
chrysanthemums, counterparts of the little cluster which Eve wore in
the bosom of her gown, on a many-cornered Turkish table at the side:
it had all the gay realism of modern Paris without losing the poetry
of the old school, or attaining the hardness of the new.

Rainham looked at it attentively, closely, for a long time. Then he
said simply:

"It's the best thing you have done, Dick. It will be one of the best
portraits in the Academy, and you ought to get a good place on the
line."

"I'm so glad!" cried Eve rapturously, clasping her hands. "On the
line! But," and her voice fell, "it isn't to go to the Academy.
Mamma has promised Sir--Dick is going to send it to the Grosvenor.
But it's pretty much the same, isn't it? Oh, now show Philip the
sketch you have made for your Academy picture," she added, pointing
to a board which stood on another easel, with a protecting veil over
the paper which was stretched upon it. "You know _he_ can tell us if
it's like the real thing."

"If it's the Riviera, or--or dry docks," added Rainham modestly.

But Lightmark stepped forward hastily, after a moment's hesitation,
and put his hand on the drawing just as Eve was preparing with due
ceremony to unveil it.

"Excuse me, I don't want to show it to Rainham yet. I--I want to
astonish him, you know."

He laughed rather uneasily, and Eve gave way, with some surprise in
her eyes, and a puzzled cloud on her pretty brow, and went and
seated herself on the settee at her mother's