deals in the
way of a lovely, clever girl and I suppose he's bound to feel cut up
when somebody else marries her. But it's all as dead as King John now.
I'll go there and do my work and wind up with a letter of thanks."

He put on his hat and coat, and took up the letter. "Don't go there,"
repeated the voice. "No good will come of it."

"Rubbish!" he said. "I can't chuck up the picture. It's all right."

He went downstairs and out into Tite Street, a little confused by all
this current of doubt and reasoning, and by no means absolutely sure of
himself. But, annoyed at realising this, he began to go forward
sturdily, and flung the letter into the first pillar-box he
encountered.

XVI

As Wyndham read the reply to his letter, it seemed as if the kind, bluff
voice of the old earl were itself speaking. "A few mornings! Come along
and make your nice little sketches for the next half-century. We have
often thought of you, and wondered what you were up to. I think we may
say with truth that we've missed you. This is a dull house now, and I
suppose I'm getting old and dull myself. At any rate I've many a twinge
in the joints, and am inclined to shut myself up in my library, though
I'm never much of a reader." Then there was a PS. "Somebody or other
tells me that you are contemplating matrimony. Well, you're a brave
young fellow, and I like you for it. I congratulate you, and wish you
luck."

As the next morning turned out fairly clear, Wyndham took his materials
with him into a hansom, and rang the bell at Grosvenor Place at about
ten o'clock. Not only had he decided that his misgivings were entirely
morbid, but as a matter of course he had been quite open with the
Robinsons about the arrangement. He had indeed explained to Alice some
considerable time ago that he should in all likelihood find it necessary
to make these fresh sketches on the very scene of the picture. It did
not seem anything out of the way to her; she regarded it as a pure
matter of work. It was sufficient that she understood his disappearance
from the studio in the midst of these busy times. And as he had made it
a point that she should possess a key of the new house just as she had
had one of the old studio, she and her mother could come and go as they
pleased in his absence, and proceed with their engrossing business of
embellishing his hall and stairway.

But as he set foot in the house at Grosvenor Place after this long
interval of years,