efore
he led her down to dinner.

At first he found it hard to talk to her. She answered him, and
not with monosyllables. But she answered him without sympathy, or
apparent pleasure in talking. Now the young artist was in the habit
of being flattered by ladies, and expected to have his small talk
made very easy for him. He liked to give himself little airs, and
was not generally disposed to labour very hard at the task of making
himself agreeable.

"Were you ever painted yet?" he asked her after they had both been
sitting silent for two or three minutes.

"Was I ever--painted? In what way?"

"I don't mean rouged, or enamelled, or got up by Madame Rachel; but
have you ever had your portrait taken?"

"I have been photographed,--of course."

"That's why I asked you if you had been painted,--so as to make some
little distinction between the two. I am a painter by profession, and
do portraits."

"So Mrs. Broughton told me."

"I am not asking for a job, you know."

"I am quite sure of that."

"But I should have thought you would have been sure to have sat to
somebody."

"I never did. I never thought of doing so. One does those things at
the instigation of one's intimate friends,--fathers, mothers, uncles,
and aunts, and the like."

"Or husbands, perhaps,--or lovers?"

"Well, yes; my intimate friend is my mother, and she would never
dream of such a thing. She hates pictures."

"Hates pictures!"

"And especially portraits. And I'm afraid, Mr. Dalrymple, she hates
artists."

"Good heavens; how cruel! I suppose there is some story attached
to it. There has been some fatal likeness,--some terrible
picture,--something in her early days?"

"Nothing of the kind, Mr. Dalrymple. It is merely the fact that her
sympathies are with ugly things, rather than with pretty things. I
think she loves the mahogany dinner-table better than anything else
in the house; and she likes to have everything dark, and plain, and
solid."

"And good?"

"Good of its kind, certainly."

"If everybody was like your mother, how would the artists live?"

"There would be none."

"And the world, you think, would be none the poorer?"

"I did not speak for myself. I think the world would be very much
the poorer. I am very fond of the ancient masters, though I do not
suppose that I understand them."

"They are easier understood than the modern, I can tell you. Perhaps
you don't care for modern pictures?"

"Not in comparison, certai