and most unnecessary warmth of manner.

"I 'm not queer at all I wish you would n't bother so, Aimee!"

That very afternoon she came into the room with a card in her hand,
after going out to answer a summons at the door-bell.

"Phil," she said, "a gentleman wants you. Chan-dos, the card says."

"Chandos!" read Phil, rising from the comfort of his couch, and taking
his pipe out of his mouth. "Who knows Chandos?--I don't. It must be some
fellow on business."

And so it proved. He found the gentleman awaiting him in the next
room, and in a very short time learned his errand. Chandos introduced
himself--Gerald Chandos, of The Pools, Bedfordshire, who, hearing of Mr.
Crewe through numerous friends, not specified, and having a fancy--quite
the fancy of an uncultured amateur, modestly--for pictures and an
absorbing passion for art in all its forms, had taken the liberty of
calling, etc. It was very smoothly said, and Chandos, of The Pools,
being an imposing patrician sort of individual, and free from all
fopperies or affectations, Phil met his advances complacently enough.
It was no unusual thing for an occasional patron to drop in after this
manner. He had no fault to find with a man who, having the good fortune
to possess money, had the good taste to know how to spend it. So he
made friends with Chandos, pretty much as he had made friends with
Gowan,--pretty much as he would have made friends with any other
sufficiently amiable and well-bred visitor to his modest studio. He
showed him his pictures, and talked art to him, and managed to spend an
hour very pleasantly, ending by selling him a couple of tiny spirited
sketches, which had taken his fancy. It was when he was taking
down these sketches from the wall that he heard a sort of smothered
exclamation from the man, who stood a few feet apart from him, and,
turning to see what it meant, he saw that he had just discovered the
fresh, lovely, black-hooded head, with the trail of autumn leaves
clinging to the loose trail of hair,--the picture for which Mollie
had sat as model. It was very evident that Chandos, of The Pools, was
admiring it.

"Ah!" said he, the next minute. "I know this face. There can scarcely be
two faces like it."

Phil left his sketches and came to him, the pleasure he felt on the
success of his creation warming him up. This picture, with Mollie\s face
and head, was a great favorite of his.

"Yes," he said, standing opposite to it, with his hands