scended, wearing light primrosecoloured gloves. He might have been the descendant of a line of kings or princes. He handed me a card with an elaborate crest engraved on it, and the interesting name of Victor de Camours. He wished a large front room, he said, as bed- and sitting-room combined, and he offered twelve shillings a week before we had time to name a price.

The Count Francesca de Mora was his cousin-a secretary at the Italian Embassy, he explained; and he had only one little weakness - he liked strong coffee; could we undertake to produce good café noir ? And as he asked this his beautiful almond-shaped eyes rested so pensively on Millicent, I began to think that he must be already half in love with her.

What could we say to so amiable a man? His voice, too, was as gentle as the cooing dove-a charming contrast to Mr. Sibleyand he condescended to look over Millicent's music, and told us he had sometimes played Egardo and Faust and Fernando in Italy, just, of course, to amuse himself, nothing more.

We caught a reflex of his lightheartedness, we laughed and jested after his departure. Nothing like foreigners, we said, for elegant well-bred expressions-for artistic sympathies. Millicent went to the extent of buying a monthly rose for his table; the snowiest of sheets, the strongest of coffee, the daintiest of côtelettes were prepared. We were in high spirits. The house really would pay at last.

When M. de Camours and sundry large and handsome boxes arrived we congratulated ourselves on having secured a young girl at three shillings a week to wait on him. He smiled on us sweetly as ever through his double eye-glasses, stroked his moustache, and told

us his room was delicious,' the rose a poem in itself, the coffee a drink for the gods. Delicate imagery clothed every phrase, and he paid the first fortnight in advance. He looked horrified when he passed Mr. Sibley coatless in the hall, or the little Sibleys sucking oranges on the stairs; but the paternal way in which he seemed to bless them, and say dear leetle tings,' quite moved us. Was he a father himself, that those horrid little he-bears could thus awake benevolent pats?

'He's a swell, I guess,' the execrable Sibley would mutter; 'but you can see the likes of him in New York often enough; and it's not all of 'em as makes a pile, though they do carry themselves as if they were worth pumpkins.'

M. de Camours was somewhat uncertain after a time in his habits

and payments. He would leave for three weeks, to stay-so he told us with his cousin, the Prince of Auray, or his uncle, the Marquis de Menier, After a much longer absence than usual, we began to fear evil had befallen our lodger. Had he been 'pinked' in a duel, thrown in a steeplechase, or arrested for debt? The array of unpaid washing-bills on his pretty Nottingham lace-covered dressingtable was really quite alarming. Sibley had even hinted he was one of those fellows who live upon women.' The suggestion was suffocating.

6

But he had left his boxes behind large heavy respectable trunksso heavy, indeed, that we could scarcely move them. We inserted advertisements in various papers, requesting information of the missing man; but as months rolled by, and no answer came, we thought we were at liberty to open these boxes, and see what property M. de Camours possessed.

A large quantity of photographs were the first objects we discovered,

representing opera - dancers and opera-singers in every imaginable costume; there was also a certain rakish-looking Rosalie in pink tights, under whose name some doggrel in French had been hastily penned. We next came upon a quantity of empty champagnebottles, and, lastly, enough bricks to have built a small chimney-at sight of which we wept.

'I guess you've been done 'ere,' said Mr. Sibley, smiling and coatless at the door. 'That French adventurer's been too much for you. His coffee must be "splendide" and his cutlets in frills; and now I'm afraid we must leave too, for I'm pining to get back to N'York City.'

It was another blow; but we were too depressed to care now what became of ourselves or our lodgers.

After the Sibleys had departed we inspected our rooms, and beheld a complete wreck. The pretty blue carpet was so begrimed that every atom of pattern had disappeared. The chairs displayed their joinings so painfully that you could

have laid a penny between them; and the little Sibleys had evidently amused themselves by playing noughts and crosses in between the rosebuds on the paper. The cretonne hung in shreds from the sofa, and the lustres of the chandelier had been clearly used as targets for Sibley to practise pistolshooting at when we were out.

Our only remaining lodger was a young music-teacher, who paid regularly, but whose music was at times rather overpowering. When Miss Swindon began to sing her scales we vowed we could bear it no longer, and so gave her notice. A little more of the terrible'ah' would have driven us completely mad.

When our last lodger left we quickly followed, remembering Nurse's warning when too late. We sold off the shattered remains of our furniture, and, after paying the landlord and taxes, found we were at least two hundred pounds to the bad since our last venture. Of this loss we said nothing, but have since meekly and thankfully retired into furnished apartments.

LILLA ASHLINTON was the only daughter of a widowed mother. The two lived together in a little cottage in Kensington. They were too poor to have a larger house; but a pleasant locality, a locality that savoured even of the aristocratic, was one of Mrs. Ashlinton's necessary luxuries. There were a few things which she could not live without, though many people, possessed of her very small income, would have readily given them up. These things were not many nor yet very expensive; every penny which she could save out of the needful expenses had to be used for the education of her daugh

ter.

Lilla Ashlinton was an artist, or rather she intended to be an artist. She was only nineteen, and although she had worked at the art which she loved so devotedly ever since she could work at anything, yet she had a sufficiently keen and real appreciation of it to know that it would be many years before she dare sign herself 'Artist.' So entire was the absorption of all her faculties in the study of this one art-paintingthat Mrs. Ashlinton had yielded to the necessities of the case, and had let Lilla spend all the money and all the time at her disposal in obtaining the education of an artist pure and simple, instead of the general education of a lady. Mrs. Ashlinton found it a hard struggle at first, but she had sufficient strong common sense to see that the only wise plan was to follow the strong bent of her child's cha

VOL. XXVII.

racter. She was perhaps a little influenced by the fact that, through Lilla's father, there was an artistic inheritance which made the name honourable. That is to say, many generations back an Ashlinton had separated himself from his race by the distinction of being a great painter, of whom his nation was proud. His had been a real love of art, without any of the commercial taint so common in the present day. His family was rich and full of honours; he had only painted for pure love. His direct descendants had kept the riches and the honours-had in fact greatly increased them; but they did not appear to have inherited the genius, although they liked to keep their name connected with art, and to retain, by a kind of stately patronage of it, some of the old glory. People who are in the crush of fashionable life, who have dignities and honours to maintain, cannot be expected to find time for more than criticism. The Earl of Ashlinton having travelled a great deal, and gone through all the picture-galleries of Europe, was regarded as a great art-critic in that circle in which he was intimately known, and which had the advantage of being the first circle in society. His only child, a daughter, who had inherited from an ancestress the pretty name of Lilla, sometimes essayed some water-colour sketches, and when she took the trouble to complete one of these productions her friends vowed they were very wonderful.

D

But Lilla Ashlinton, of Daphne Cottage, Kensington, scarcely knew that she possessed any such grand connections, and certainly she never thought about them. They were socially as far removed from her as if a great gulf had been fixed between them. The connection which existed was indeed so distant as hardly to be one at all. Even Mrs. Ashlinton, who was proud of her husband's name, and essentially proud of the fact that she as well as himself had come of a good family, never thought of these great people unless she should chance to see their names in the Court Circular, when she occasionally treated herself to a newspaper.

Lilla Ashlinton was at the perilous age of nineteen, when girls of her peculiar style of beauty are at their prettiest. Her face seemed made up of roses and lilies; she had laughing blue eyes, and just that indescribable yellow hair which artists think so adorable. But she had never found her good looks any trouble; she had yet to find out by bitter experience the vexation of being too pretty.

Her life was such a busy one that she certainly had little time to discover whether she was pretty or not. When she went through the streets to the art-school she was too full of thoughts of her work, which to her was no task, but an enthusiasm, even to notice the glances of admiration which her bright face obtained from many passers-by. One fact will serve to show how little she thought of herself. Every day when she went out she met a certain tall dark student, and it never occurred to her that this was more than an odd coincidence. She knew nothing more of him than that his name was Harry White, and that, although he worked in some of the same classes as

herself, he was a much more advanced artist. But she learnt to look for and to like his handsome swarthy face, and to feel a certain friendliness in these meetings, for his admiration was so unobtrusive that it never troubled her. When she went to bed at night she had no temptation to look into her glass and see how blue her eyes were; she was generally so sleepy that, though she might comb out her hair, she would not pause even to take an artistic pleasure in its colour. In the morning she was up early, but she had quite enough to do to fill all her time until she went to the art-school. Her whole morning was passed in those stuffy rooms, where the smell of turpentine and the subdued chatter of idle students sometimes became almost unbearable. But Lilla worked on in a way that would have been wonderful had she not

really loved her work. Moreover she greatly liked her professor, who was one of the most hard-working and earnest artists of eminence in the present day. He had often noticed this industrious little pupil of his, whose yellow hair and pretty name had struck him when she first entered his classes. He considered that she really had promise in her, and that the promise was very likely to be fulfilled, if her devotion lasted; but he was one of those teachers who never give more praise than a single word or a single smile; thus, although many a student found him or herself singled out by this stern professor with the finger of scorn, Lilla had never discovered that she was a favourite or a promising pupil. Her professor was very strict with her, gave her tasks that were by no means easy, and sometimes he talked to her, though only for a minute or two, as he would have talked to a fellow-artist rather than to a pupil. This gave Lilla

a kind of consciousness that she was getting on; that she was, indeed, not unworthy of her vocation.

Three days in the week Lilla stayed at the school until late in the evening, for on those three days her professor looked over all the classes. In the morning she drew from the life; in the afternoon she painted from the antique; in the evening she copied outline drawings. On the other three mornings she copied oil-paintings, generally in one of the public galleries. This she did, to some extent, under Professor Paget's directions; that is to say, he told her what to copy, and he would manage to see her copy some time or other during its production. It had never occurred to her that this was not one of his duties, and that his taking the trouble to make very cutting and crushing remarks about her copies was really a sign of especial favour. After her morning's copying she would go home and lock herself into her little studio, for this was the portion of her time which Professor Paget had told her to keep for the attempting of something original. 'Turn_the_canvases to the wall,' he said, 'as soon as you have done with them; don't bring them to me, for they won't be worth looking at; but don't burn them. They will serve you as milestones, and unless you reserve some portion of your time for original effort you will suffer from the curse of inanity which hangs over our modern schools; you will turn out a copyist.' So that Lilla's days were quite filled up, and only late in the evening did she come into her mother's little sitting-room, made dainty by many cheap if pretty devices, and by a few relics of prosperous days.

There she would find Mrs. Ashlinton sitting beside her work

basket, a perfect picture of gentle motherliness. She stitched for herself and for her daughter; she made her dresses, and did the thousand and one little things which Lilla had literally no time to do for herself. Mrs. Ashlinton had long since found out that the fierce light which sometimes flashed out of those blue eyes came from the fire of genius, and she very well knew that it was false economy to put Pegasus into the plough. It was a wonderfully happy cheerful life which these two led: the girl absorbed in her work and her ambition; the mother living half in those pleasant memories which are the solace of old age, and half in dreams of her girl's future. These memories and dreams filled Mrs. Ashlinton's mind, whilst her hands were busy with the many tasks of domestic life. Yet she was always ready to put aside her work, take off her spectacles, and sympathise with Lilla's very dif ferent world and work. Lilla had just now in her studio a veritable child of her heart; a dearly beloved 'study,' as she called it. She would never have dared to have called it more than a study, but she had bestowed more genuine work upon it than many of our popular artists bestow upon their pictures for the summer exhibitions. It never occurred to her that anybody would see this beloved canvas except her mother; the delight of the actual work was her stimulus, and was what she found her reward in. It was fortunate that this was so, as she dared not show any production of hers to her professor, and she was much too shy to exhibit it to any one else. But her mother was her unailing critic, always ready to give an opinion, and happily not always too ready to encourage. Mrs. Ashlinton was one of those persons whose inborn good taste