eeded prosperously; and Theodora was quite
sufficiently in request in her room to be satisfied, and to make it
difficult to find a spare afternoon to go and order one of her favourite
oak frames.

However, she was at length able to make the expedition; and she was busy
in giving directions as to the width of margin, when from the interior
of the shop there came forward no other than the Earl of St. Erme.

They shook hands, and she sent her excuses to Lady Lucy for having been
too much occupied to call, asking whether she was still in town.

'Only till Thursday,' he said, 'when I take her to join my aunt, who is
to show her the Rhine.'

'Do not you go with them?'

'I have not decided. It depends upon circumstances. Did not I hear
something of your family visiting Germany?'

'Perhaps they may,' said Theodora, dryly. He began to study the
portrait, and saw some likeness, but was distressed by something in the
drawing of the mouth.

'Yes,' said Theodora, 'I know it is wrong; but Miss Piper could not see
it as I did, and her alterations only made it worse, till I longed to be
able to draw.'

'I wonder if I might venture,' said Lord St. Erme, screwing up his eye,
and walking round the picture. 'I am sure, with your artist eye, you
must know what it is not to be able to keep your hands off.'

'Not I,' said Theodora, smiling. 'Pencils are useless tools to me. But
it would be a great benefit to the picture, and Miss Piper will fancy it
all her own.'

'You trust me, then?' and he turned to ask for a piece of chalk, adding,
'But is it not too bold a measure without the subject?'

'He is in the carriage, with his nurse;' and Theodora, unable to resist
so material an improvement to her gift, brought him in, and set him up
on the counter opposite to a flaming picture of a gentleman in a red
coat, which he was pleased to call papa, and which caused his face to
assume a look that was conveyed to the portrait by Lord St. Erme, and
rendered it the individual Johnnie Martindale, instead of merely a pale
boy in a red sash.

Theodora was too much gratified not to declare it frankly, and to say
how much charmed his mother would be; and she was pleased by a remark of
Lord St. Erme, that showed that his poet mind comprehended that wistful
intelligence that gave a peculiar beauty to Johnnie's thin white face.

She thought to pay off her obligations by an immediate visit to his
sister, while she knew him to be safe out of the way