able to give, as he was leaving town the next day with his wife.
Lyon was amply content--he saw his way so clear: he should be able to do
at his convenience what remained, with or without his friend's
attendance. At any rate, as there was no hurry, he would let the thing
stand over till his own return to London, in November, when he would
come back to it with a fresh eye. On the Colonel's asking him if his
wife might come and see it the next day, if she should find a
minute--this was so greatly her desire--Lyon begged as a special favour
that she would wait: he was so far from satisfied as yet. This was the
repetition of a proposal Mrs. Capadose had made on the occasion of his
last visit to her, and he had then asked for a delay--declared that he
was by no means content. He was really delighted, and he was again a
little ashamed of himself.

By the fifth of August the weather was very warm, and on that day, while
the Colonel sat straight and gossiped, Lyon opened for the sake of
ventilation a little subsidiary door which led directly from his studio
into the garden and sometimes served as an entrance and an exit for
models and for visitors of the humbler sort, and as a passage for
canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main
entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach
had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from
which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the
wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them,
with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had
collected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight from persons
stepping into the gallery. The way from the garden was plainer and at
once more practicable and more private. Lyon's domain, in St. John's
Wood, was not vast, but when the door stood open of a summer's day it
offered a glimpse of flowers and trees, you smelt something sweet and
you heard the birds. On this particular morning the side-door had been
found convenient by an unannounced visitor, a youngish woman who stood
in the room before the Colonel perceived her and whom he perceived
before she was noticed by his friend. She was very quiet, and she looked
from one of the men to the other. 'Oh, dear, here's another!' Lyon
exclaimed, as soon as his eyes rested on her. She belonged, in fact, to
a somewhat importunate class--the model in search of employment, an