happiness as a gift. Confide in me, and perhaps we may arrange things.”

The other smiled sadly, but shook his head.

It was the afternoon following the events related in the previous chapter. The two speakers who were in such serious conversation stood in a shabby studio in Fitzroy Square gravely contemplating one another.

John Egerton, the owner of the place was a successful artist, whose works sold well, whose black and white illustrations were much sought after by magazine proprietors, and whose Academy pictures had brought him some amount of notoriety. His success was well deserved, for, after a rather wild student life on the Continent, he was now exceedingly industrious. Art was his hobby, and he had but little pleasure outside the walls of his studio. Though discarding a collar, and attired negligently in a paint-besmirched coat very much the worse for wear, a pair of trousers much bespattered, and feet thrust into slippers, yet his face spoke of genius and indomitable perseverance, with its deep grey eyes, firm, yet tender mouth, and general expression of power and independence.

His visitor, Hugh Trethowen, was of a different type—handsome, and perhaps a trifle more refined. A splendid specimen of manhood, with his fine height and strongly-built frame, well-cut Saxon features, and bright colouring, with laughing blue eyes, the earnest depths of which were rendered all the more apparent by the thoughtful, preoccupied look which his countenance wore.

A young girl, undeniably beautiful, with a good complexion, stood watching them. She was dressed in a bright but becoming costume of the harem, and had, until the arrival of Trethowen, been posing to the artist. Upon the easel was a full length canvas almost complete—a marvellous likeness, representing her laughing face, with its clear brown eyes, and her bare white arms swinging the scimitars over her head in the undulating motion of the Circassian dance.

Besides acting in the capacity of model, Dolly Vivian was the artist’s companion, critic and friend. Among the brethren of the brush she was well-known as a quiet, patient, unobtrusive girl, who, with commendable self-sacrifice, had supported her mother and invalid sister by her earnings. Egerton had become acquainted with her years ago, long before he became known to fame, at a time when his studio was an attic in a street off the Edgware Road, when he used frequently to eat but one meal a day, and had often shared that with her. She was his friend and 

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