stroke loyally in
the sunlight. In spite of gloomy winter and gloomier London, I will try
if I can't hang nature and summer on your walls forever. As for me,
you know I must go to Gerard Dow and Cuyp, and Pierre de Hoogh, when
my little sand is run; but my handwriting shall warm your children's
children's hearts, sir, when this hand is dust." His eye turned inward,
he walked to and fro, and his companions died out of his sight--he was
in the kingdom of art.

His lordship and Jean entered the "Peacock," followed by Flucker, who
merely lingered at the door to moralize as follows:

"Hech! hech! isna thaat lamentable? Christie's mon's as daft as a drunk
weaver."

But one stayed quietly behind, and assumed that moment the office of her
life.

"Ay!" he burst out again, "the resources of our art are still
unfathomed! Pictures are yet to be painted that shall refresh men's
inner souls, and help their hearts against the artificial world; and
charm the fiend away, like David's harp!! The world, after centuries of
lies, will give nature and truth a trial. What a paradise art will be,
when truths, instead of lies, shall be told on paper, on marble, on
canvas, and on the boards!!!"

"Dinner's on the boarrd," murmured Christie, alluding to Lord Ipsden's
breakfast; "and I hae the charge o' ye," pulling his sleeve hard enough
to destroy the equilibrium of a flea.

"Then don't let us waste our time here. Oh, Christie!"

"What est, my laddy?"

"I'm so preciously hungry!!!!"

"C-way* then!"

* Come away.

Off they ran, hand in hand, sparks of beauty, love and happiness flying
all about them.

CHAPTER XVII.

"THERE is nothing but meeting and parting in this world!" and you may be
sure the incongruous personages of our tale could not long be together.
Their separate paths had met for an instant in one focus, furnished then
and there the matter of an eccentric story, and then diverged forever.

Our lives have a general current, and also an episode or two; and the
episodes of a commonplace life are often rather startling; in like
manner this tale is not a specimen, but an episode of Lord Ipsden and
Lady Barbara, who soon after this married and lived like the rest of the
_beau monde._ In so doing, they passed out of my hands; such as wish to
know how viscounts and viscountesses feed and sleep, and do the domestic
(so called), and the social (so called), are referred to the fashionable
novel. To Mr. Saunders, for