in Paris. This tale is absolutely irresponsible for Miss Priscilla's informants; it only reports her words.

Now, Mrs. Euphemia Aiken, in spite of a severe ruction with her husband, had really not consciously imputed to him any transgression of a serious nature when—as that gentleman worded it—she "flounced away" to her Aunt Priscilla with an angry report of how Reginald had insulted her. She had much too high an opinion of him to form, on her own account, a mental version of his conduct, such as the one her excellent Aunt jumped at, in pursuance of the establishment of a vile moral character for Artists and nephews-in-law generally, with a concrete foundation in the case of an Artist-nephew—a Centaur-like combination with a doubt which half was which. But nothing is easier than to convince any human creature that any other is twice, thrice, four times as human as itself, in respect of what is graceless or disgraceful—spot-stroke barred, of course; meaning felony. So that after a long interview with Aunt Priscilla, this foolish woman cried herself to sleep, having accepted the good lady's offered hospitality, and was next morning so vigorously urged to do scriptural things in the way of forgiveness and submission to her husband—so Miltonic, in fact, did the prevailing atmosphere become—that she naturally sat down and wrote a healthily furious letter to him. The tale may surmise that she offered him Sairah as a consolation for what it knows she proposed—her own withdrawal to a voluntary grass-widowhood. For she flatly refused to return to her deserted hearth. And, indeed, the poor lady may have felt that her home had been soiled and desecrated. But it was not only her Aunt's impudent claim to superior knowledge—she was still Miss Priscilla Bax, and of irreproachable character—that had influenced her, but the recollection of Sairah. It would not have been half as bad if it had been a distinguished young lady with a swoop, like in a shiny journal she subscribed for quarterly. But Sairah! That gurl! Visions of Sairah's coiffure; of the way Sairah appeared to be coming through, locally, owing to previousness on the part of hooks which would not wait for their own affinities, but annexed the very first eye that appealed to them; of intolerable stockings she overlooked large holes in, however careful she see to 'em when they come from the Wash; of her chronic pocket-handkerchief—all these kept floating before her eyes and exasperating her sense of insult and degradation past endurance. Perhaps the worst and most irritating thought was the extent to which she had stooped to supplement this maid's all-work by efforts of her own, without which their small household could scarcely have lived within its limited means. No!—let Reginald grill his own chops now, or find another Sairah!

It was illustrative of the unreality of this ruction that the lady took it as a matter of course that Sairah would accept the sack in the spirit in which it was given; for official banishment of the culprit was her last act on leaving the house. No idea entered her head that her husband had the slightest personal wish to retain Sairah.

As for him, he judged it best to pay the girl her month's wages and send her packing. He removed her deposit of flue from the picture-varnish, and in due time completed the job and sent it off to its destination. He fell back provisionally on his old bachelor ways, making his own bed and slipping slowly down into Chaos at home, but getting well fed either by his friends or at an Italian restaurant near by—others being beyond his means or fraught with garbage—and writing frequent appeals to his wife not to be an Ass, but to come back and be jolly. She opened his letters and read them, and more than once all but started to return to him—would have done so, in fact, if her excellent Aunt had not pointed out, each time, that it was the Woman's duty to forgive. Which she might have gone the length of accepting, but for its exasperating sequel, "and submit herself to her husband."

But neither he nor either of the other actors in this drama had the slightest idea that it had been witnessed by any eyes but their own.

CHAPTER II

How a little old gentleman was left alone in a Library, in front of the picture Sairah had only just wiped gently. How he woke up from a dream, which went on. The loquacity of a picture, and how he pointed out to it its unreality. The Artist's name. There was plenty of time to hear more. The exact date of Antiquity. The Rational way of accounting for it.

Old Mr. Pelly is the little grey-headed wrinkled man with gold spectacles whom you have seen in London bookshops and curio-stores in late August and early September, when all the world has been away; the little old man who has seemed to you to have walked out of the last century but one. You may not have observed him closely enough at the moment to have a clear recollection of details, but you will have retained an image of knee-breeches and silk stockings; of something peculiar in the way of a low-crowned hat; of a watch and real seals; of a gold snuff-box you would have liked to sell for your own benefit; and of an ebony walking-stick with a silver head and a little silk tassel. On thinking this old gentleman over you will probably feel sorry you did not ask him a question about Mazarine Bibles or Aldus Manutius, so certain were you he would not have been rude.

But you did not do so, and very likely he went back to Grewceham, in Worcestershire, where he lives by himself, and you lost your opportunity that time. However that may be, it is old Mr. Pelly our story has to do with now, and he is sitting before a wood-fire out of all proportion to the little dry old thing it was lighted to warm, and listening to the roaring of the wind in the big chimney of the library he sits in.

But it is not his own library. That is at Grewceham, two miles off. This library is the fine old library at Surley Stakes, the country-seat of Sir Stopleigh Upwell, M.P., whose father was at school with Mr. Pelly, over sixty years ago.

Mr. Pelly is stopping at "The Stakes," as it is called, to avoid the noise and fuss of the little market-town during an election. And for that same reason has not accompanied Sir Stopleigh and his wife and daughter to a festivity consequent on the return of that very old Bart, for the County. They will be late back; so Mr. Pelly can do no better than sit in the firelight, rejecting lamps and candles, and thinking over the translation of an Italian manuscript, in fragments, that his friend Professor Schrudengesser has sent him from Florence. It has been supposed to have some connection with the cinque-cento portrait by an unknown Italian artist that hangs above the fire-blaze. And this portrait is the one the story saw, a little over six months since, in the atelier of that picture-cleaner, Mr. Reginald Aiken, who managed to brew a quarrel with his wife by his own silliness and bad taste.

It is only dimly visible in the half-light, but Mr. Pelly knows it is there; knows, too, that its eyes can see him, if a picture's eyes can see, and that its laugh is there on the parted lips, and that its jewelled hand is wound into the great tress of gold that falls on its bosom. For it is a portrait of a young and beautiful woman, such as Galuppi Baldassare wrote music about—you know, of course! And Mr. Pelly, as he thinks what it will look like when Stebbings, the butler, or his myrmidons, bring in lights, feels chilly and grown old.

But Stebbings' instructions were distinctly not to bring in lights till Mr. Pelly rang, and Mr. Pelly didn't ring. He drank the cup of coffee Stebbings had provided, without putting any cognac in it, and then fell into a doze. When he awoke, with a start and a sudden conviction that he indignantly fought against that he had been asleep, it was to find that the log-flare had worn itself out, and the log it fed on was in its decrepitude.