treets, and his
presentation of the characteristic attitudes of each--those attitudes
which, according to him, betray the "inner soul" of the bishop or the
foundling--was admirable. Then he fell upon the Academy--that respected
body of which I suppose he will soon be the President--and tore it limb
from limb. With what face I shall ever sit at the same table with him at
the Academy dinners of the future--supposing fortune ever exalts me again
as she did this year to that august meal--I hardly know. Millais's faces,
Pettie's knights, or Calderon's beauties--all fared the same. You could
not say it was ill-natured; it was simply the bare truth of things put in
the whimsical manner which is natural to Forbes.

'Miss Bretherton listened to and laughed at it all, finding her way
through the crowd of unfamiliar names and allusions with a woman's
cleverness, looking adorable all the time in a cloak of some brown velvet
stuff, and a large hat also of brown velvet. She has a beautiful hand,
fine and delicate, not specially small, but full of character; it was
pleasant to watch it playing with her orange, or smoothing back every now
and then the rebellious locks which will stray, do what she will, beyond
the boundaries assigned to them. Presently Wallace was ill-advised enough
to ask her which pictures she had liked best at the Private View; she
replied by picking out a ballroom scene of Forth's and an unutterable
mawkish thing of Halford's--a troubadour in a pink dressing-gown,
gracefully intertwined with violet scarves, singing to a party of robust
young women in a "light which never was on sea or land." "You could count
all the figures in the first," she said, "it was so lifelike, so real;"
and then Halford was romantic, the picture was pretty, and she liked it.
I looked at Forbes with some amusement; it was gratifying, remembering
the rodomontade with which Wallace and had been crushed on the night of
the _White Lady_, to see him wince under Miss Bretherton's liking of the
worst art in England! Is the critical spirit worth something, or is it
superfluous in theatrical matters and only indispensable in matters of
painting! I think he caught the challenge in my eye, for he evidently
felt himself in some little difficulty.

'"Oh, you couldn't," he said with a groan, "you couldn't like that
ballroom,--and that troubadour, Heaven forgive us! Well, there must be
something in it,--there must be something in it, if it really gives