ords; and therefore simply suggested that as time was pressing he
had better go on with his work. "I am quite ready now," said she.

"Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture
than I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the
canvas from top to bottom without a groan,--without a single inner
groan,--if you will let me."

"For heaven's sake do nothing of the kind! Why should you?"

"Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that
I come here. Clara--" Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared,
very weary, having been piling fagots with assiduity, till human
nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way
almost up to Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in
anger at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for
all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognised the fact
that the fault had been with himself. Mrs. Broughton had been twelve
minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen,--having
no doubt made a mistake as to three,--and had told herself that
with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready
done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply
sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been
during the interval,--what it is to have to pile up such fagots as
those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own
heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple
to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have
become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with
accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but
Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.

"My friends," said Mrs. Broughton, "this will not do. This is not
working; this is not sitting."

"Mr. Dalrymple had been explaining to me the precarious nature of an
artist's profession," said Clara.

"It is not precarious with him," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton,
sententiously.

"Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words
he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera."

"I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom."

"And why?" said Mrs. Broughton, putting up her hands to heaven in
tragic horror.

"Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it."

"And how little you care about her, too," said Mrs. Broughton.