ed with all the audacity and _chic_ of the modern French school,
of a fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the
soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a
background of masses of flowers.

And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists
who were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in
their expressions of approval.

"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these
critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of
discussion. "Of course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their
style, you know. The old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't
understand it----"

And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this
criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham
brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the
committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on
its way to New York.

After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less
important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of
Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to
fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated
thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could
flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two
admirable qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.

CHAPTER III

It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to
the Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a
man who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was
an opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by
constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained
by young barristers even when, as in Sylvester's case, they have
already designs upon a snug constituency.

Sylvester began by giving his _protege_ a commission to paint his
mother's portrait, and before this work was finished a very
appreciable degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester
family and the young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying
a woman-of-the-world's passion for small-talk and fashionable
intelligence--judiciously culled from the columns of the daily
newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and
paste-brush.

With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had
from a very early age been accust