nces, their breezes, their pure waters, had passed into her
face.

But it was the execution of the picture which perhaps specially
arrested the attention of the men examining it.

'Eclectic stuff!' said Watson to himself, presently, as he turned
away--'seen with other men's eyes!'

But on Lord Findon and on Cuningham the effect was of another kind.
The picture seemed to them also a combination of many things, or
rather of attempts at many things--Burne-Jones' mystical colour--the
rustic character of a Bastien-Lepage or a Millet--with the jewelled
detail of a fourteenth-century Florentine, so wonderful were the
harebells in the foreground, the lichened rocks, the dabbled fleece
of the lamb: but they realised that it was a combination that only a
remarkable talent could have achieved.

'By Jove!' said Findon, turning on the artist with animation, 'where
did you learn all this?'

'I've been painting a good many years,' said Fenwick, his cheeks
aglow. 'But I've got on a lot this last six months.'

'I suppose, in the country, you couldn't get properly at the model?'

'No. I've had no chances.'

'Let's all pray to have none,' said Cuningham, good-naturedly. 'I had
no notion you were such a swell.'

But his light-blue eyes as they rested on Fenwick were less friendly.
His Scotch prudence was alarmed. Had he in truth introduced a genius
unawares to his only profitable patron?

'Who is the model, if I may ask?' said Lord Findon, still examining
the picture.

The reply came haltingly, after a pause.

'Oh!--some one I knew in Westmoreland.'

The speaker had turned red. Naturally no one asked any further
questions. Cuningham noticed that the face was certainly from the same
original as the face in the sketch-book, but he kept his observation
to himself.

Lord Findon, with the eagerness of a Londoner discovering some new
thing, fell into quick talk with Fenwick; looked him meanwhile up
and down, his features, bearing, clothes; noticed his North-Country
accent, and all the other signs of the plebeian. And presently
Fenwick, placed at his ease, began for the first time to expand,
became argumentative and explosive. In a few minutes he was
laying down the law in his Westmoreland manner--attacking the
Academy--denouncing certain pictures of the year--with a flushed,
confident face and a gesticulating hand. Watson observed him with some
astonishment; Lord Findon looked amused--and pulled out his watch.

'Oh, well, ev