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Title: An Engagement of Convenience
A Novel

Author: Louis Zangwill

Release Date: September 17, 2010 [EBook #33747]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_An Engagement
of Convenience_

_A Novel_

_By_

_Louis Zangwill_

_Author of "The World and a Man,"
"One's Womenkind," &c., &c._

_London
Brown, Langham & Co., Ltd.
78 New Bond Street, W.
1908_

"In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be!"

GEORGE MEREDITH.

An
Engagement of Convenience

I

Miss Robinson had first seen Wyndham and fallen in love with him on the
day that he appeared in the road as a neighbour and set up his studio
there. But that was years before, and she had never made his
acquaintance. He was the Prince Charming of the romances, handsome, of
knightly bearing, with a winning smile on his frank face. From her magic
window in the big corner house where the road branched off into two, she
had narrowly observed his goings and comings, had watched eagerly all
that was visible of his romantic, mysterious profession--the picturesque
Italian models that pulled his bell, the great canvasses and frames
that, during the earlier years at least, were borne in through his door,
to reappear in due course as finished pictures on their way to the
exhibitions--and it was sometimes possible to catch glimpses of stately
figure-paintings and fascinating scenes and landscapes.

Then, too, there was the suggestion of his belonging to a brilliant
social world: she had indeed felt that at her first sight of him. Smart
broughams and victorias in which nestled stylish people not unfrequently
drew up at his studio about tea-time, and in the season he could be seen
going off every night in garb of ceremony; not to speak of his
occasional departures--to important country-houses, no doubt--with
portmanteaus and dressing-bags stacked on the roof of his han