off.

"Whether what?" asked the listener.

"Oh, nothing. What's the time?"

"Whether _what_?" repeated Warburton, savagely.

"Well--whether Rosamund doesn't a little regret?"

"Do _you_?" asked Will, without looking round.

"I? Not for a moment, my dear boy! She did me the greatest possible
kindness--only _you_ even did me a greater. At this moment I should
have been cursing and smoking cheap tobacco in Battersea--unless I had
got sick of it all and done the _hic jacet_ business, a strong
probability. Never did a girl behave more sensibly. Some day I hope to
tell her so; of course when she has married somebody else. Then I'll
paint her portrait, and make her the envy of a season--by Jove, I will!
Splendid subject, she'd be. . . . When I think of that beastly
so-called portrait that I put my foot through, the day I was in hell!
Queer how one develops all at a jump. Two years ago I could no more
paint a woman's portrait than I could build a cathedral. I caught the
trick in the Slummer, but didn't see all it meant till Blackstaffe
asked me to paint Lady Rockett.--Rosamund ought to have given me the
sack when she saw that daub, meant for her. Good little girl; she held
as long as she could. Oh, I'll paint her divinely, one of these days."

The soft humming of a gong summoned them to another room, where lunch
was ready. Never had Warburton showed such lack of genial humour at his
friend's table. He ate mechanically, and spoke hardly at all. Little by
little, Franks felt the depressing effect of this companionship. When
they returned to the studio, to smoke by the fireside, only a casual
word broke the cheerless silence.

"I oughtn't to have come to-day," said Will, at length, half
apologetically. "I feel like a bear with a sore head. I think I'm
going."

"Shall I come and see you some evening?" asked the other in his
friendliest tone.

"No--I mean not just yet.--I'll write and ask you."

And Will went out into the frosty gloom.

CHAPTER 24

By way of Allchin, who knew all the gossip of the neighbourhood,
Warburton learnt that his new competitor in trade was a man with five
children and a wife given to drink; he had been in business in another
part of London, and was suspected to have removed with the hope that
new surroundings might help his wife to overcome her disastrous
failing. A very respectable man, people said; kind husband, good
father, honest dealer. But Allchin reported, with a twinkle of t