bankruptcy staring me in the face. On whose shoulders does this
dreadful responsibility rest? On your Lordship's!"

_Second Letter._--"After a week's delay, you favor me, my Lord, with a
curt reply. I can be equally curt on my side. I indignantly deny that
I or my wife ever presumed to see your Lordship's name as a means
of recommendation to sitters without your permission. Some enemy has
slandered us. I claim as my right to know the name of that enemy."

_Third (and last) Letter._--"Another week has passed--and not a word
of answer has reached me from your Lordship. It matters little. I have
employed the interval in making inquiries, and I have at last discovered
the hostile influence which has estranged you from me. I have been, it
seems, so unfortunate as to offend Lady Lydiard (how, I cannot imagine);
and the all-powerful influence of this noble lady is now used against
the struggling artist who is united to you by the sacred ties of
kindred. Be it so. I can fight my way upwards, my Lord, as other men
have done before me. A day may yet come when the throng of carriages
waiting at the door of the fashionable portrait-painter will include her
Ladyship's vehicle, and bring me the tardy expression of her Ladyship's
regret. I refer you, my Lord Lydiard, to that day!"

Having read Mr. Tollmidge's formidable assertions relating to herself
for the second time, Lady Lydiard's meditations came to an abrupt end.
She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and
threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them,
among other papers that had not been arranged since Lord Lydiard's
death.

"The idiot!" said her Ladyship, thinking of Mr. Tollmidge, "I never even
heard of him, in my husband's lifetime; I never even knew that he was
really related to Lord Lydiard, till I found his letters. What is to be
done next?"

She looked, as she put that question to herself, at an open newspaper
thrown on the table, which announced the death of "that accomplished
artist Mr. Tollmidge, related, it is said, to the late well-known
connoisseur, Lord Lydiard." In the next sentence the writer of the
obituary notice deplored the destitute condition of Mrs. Tollmidge and
her children, "thrown helpless on the mercy of the world." Lady Lydiard
stood by the table with her eyes on those lines, and saw but too plainly
the direction in which they pointed--the direction of her check-book.

Turning towards the f