t up in entire ignorance of
love, so that the thought of it has never entered her head, the thing
itself, when it falls upon her, is overwhelming, and infolds her as
with a garment from head to foot, and, except to her lover, she
becomes as a sealed fountain. I know not how long this season of
expectation would have lasted for Iris, but for Arnold's conversation
with his cousin, which persuaded him to speak and bring matters to a
final issue. To this girl, living as secluded as if she was in an
Oriental harem, who had never thought of love as a thing possible for
herself, the consciousness that Arnold loved her was bewildering and
astonishing, and she waited, knowing that sooner or later something
would be said, but trembling for fear that it should be said.

After all, it was Lala Roy, and not Clara, who finally determined
Arnold to wait no longer.

He came every day to the studio with Iris when she sat for her
portrait. This was in the afternoon. But he now got into the habit of
coming in the morning, and would sit in silence looking on. He came
partly because he liked the young man, and partly because the
painter's art was new to him, and it amused him to watch a man giving
his whole time and intellect to the copying or faces and things on
canvas. Also, he was well aware by this time that it was not to see
Mr. Emblem or himself that Arnold spent every evening at the house,
and he was amused to watch the progress of an English courtship. In
India, we know, they manage matters differently, and so as to give the
bridegroom no more trouble than is necessary. This young man, however,
took, he observed, the most wonderful pains and the most extraordinary
trouble to please.

"Do you know, Lala Roy," Arnold said one morning after a silence of
three hours or so, "do you know that this is going to be the portrait
of the most beautiful woman in the world, and the best?"

"It is well," said the Philosopher, "when a young man desires virtue
as well as beauty."

"You have known her all her life. Don't trouble yourself to speak,
Lala. You can nod your head if there isn't a maxim ready. You began to
lodge in the house twenty years ago, and you have seen her every day
since. If she is not the best, as well as the most beautiful girl in
the world, you ought to know and can contradict me. But you do know
it."

"Happy is the man," said the Sage, "who shall call her wife; happy the
children who shall call her mother."

"I suppo