any charming effects--for the most part
coldly sad and white--which the river offered, towards evening, from
the window of his friend's dining-room.

After his first visit, he availed himself eagerly of Rainham's
invitation to make his property the point of view from which he
could most conveniently transfer to canvas his impressions; and he
worked hard for months, with an industry that came upon his friend
as a surprise, at the uneven outlines of the Thames warehouses, and
the sharp-pointed masts that rose so trenchantly above them. He had
generated an habit of coming and going, as he pleased, without
consideration of his host's absences; and latterly, in the early
spring--whose caprices in England Rainham was never in a hurry to
encounter--the easel and painting tools of the assiduous artist had
become an almost constant feature of the landscape.

Now, towards the close of an exceptionally brilliant day in the
finish of May, he was putting the last touches to a picture which
had occupied him for some months, and which he hoped to have
completed for Rainham's return. As he stood on the wharf, which ran
down to the river-side, leaning back against a crane of ancient
pattern, and viewing his easel from a few yards' distance
critically, he could not contemplate the result without a certain
complacency.

"It's deuced good, after all," he said to himself, with his head
poised a little on one side. "Yes, old Rainham will like this. And,
by Jove! what matters a good deal more, the hangers will like it,
and if it's sold--and, confound it! it must be sold--it will be a
case of three figures."

He had one hand in his pocket, and instinctively--it may have been
the result of his meditation--he fell to jingling some coins in it.
They were not very many, but just then, though he was a young
gentleman keenly alive to the advantages of a full purse, their
paucity hardly troubled him. He felt, for the nonce, assured of his
facility, and doubtless had a vista of unlimited commissions and the
world at his feet, for he drew himself up to his full height of six
feet and looked out beyond the easel with a smile that had no longer
its origin in the fruition of the artist. Indeed, as he stood there,
in his light, lax dress and the fulness of his youth, he had (his
art apart) excuse for self-complacency. He was very pleasant to look
upon, with an air of having always been popular with his fellows,
and the favourite of women; this, too,