nd due initiation of Mrs.
Brash, be in form really to wait on me. The situation must further, to
my knowledge, have developed happily, for I arranged with Mrs. Munden
that our friend, now all ready to begin, but wanting first just to see
the things I had most recently done, should come once more, as a final
preliminary, to my studio. A good foreign friend of mine, a French
painter, Paul Outreau, was at the moment in London, and I had proposed,
as he was much interested in types, to get together for his amusement a
small afternoon party. Every one came, my big room was full, there was
music and a modest spread; and I've not forgotten the light of admiration
in Outreau's expressive face as at the end of half an hour he came up to
me in his enthusiasm. "_Bonte divine, mon cher--que cette vieille est
donc belle_!"

I had tried to collect all the beauty I could, and also all the youth, so
that for a moment I was at a loss. I had talked to many people and
provided for the music, and there were figures in the crowd that were
still lost to me. "What old woman do you mean?"

"I don't know her name--she was over by the door a moment ago. I asked
somebody and was told, I think, that she's American."

I looked about and saw one of my guests attach a pair of fine eyes to
Outreau very much as if she knew he must be talking of her. "Oh Lady
Beldonald! Yes, she's handsome; but the great point about her is that
she has been 'put up' to keep, and that she wouldn't be flattered if she
knew you spoke of her as old. A box of sardines is 'old' only after it
has been opened, Lady Beldonald never has yet been--but I'm going to do
it." I joked, but I was somewhat disappointed. It was a type that, with
his unerring sense for the _banal_, I shouldn't have expected Outreau to
pick out.

"You're going to paint her? But, my dear man, she is painted--and as
neither you nor I can do it. _Ou est-elle donc_? He had lost her, and I
saw I had made a mistake. She's the greatest of all the great Holbeins."

I was relieved. "Ah then not Lady Beldonald! But do I possess a Holbein
of _any_ price unawares?"

"There she is--there she is! Dear, dear, dear, what a head!" And I saw
whom he meant--and what: a small old lady in a black dress and a black
bonnet, both relieved with a little white, who had evidently just
changed, her place to reach a corner from which more of the room and of
the scene was presented to her. She appeared unnotice