Oh dear, no; not yet. I mean to get her to do so. There's a strength
about her, which would make her sit the part admirably. And I fancy
she would like to be driving a nail into a fellow's head. I think I
shall take Musselboro for a Sisera."

"You're not in earnest?"

"He would just do for it. But of course I shan't ask him to sit, as
my Jael would not like it. She would not consent to operate on so
base a subject. So you really are going down to Guestwick?"

"Yes; I start to-morrow. Good-by, old fellow. I'll come and sit for
Sisera if you'll let me;--only Miss Van Jael shall have a blunted
nail, if you please."

Then Johnny left the artist's room and walked across from Kensington
to Lady Demolines' house. As he went he partly accused himself and
partly excused himself in that matter of his love for Lily Dale.
There were moments of his life in which he felt that he would
willingly die for her,--that life was not worth having without
her,--in which he went about inwardly reproaching fortune for having
treated him so cruelly. Why should she not be his? He half believed
that she loved him. She had almost told him so. She could not surely
still love that other man who had treated her with such vile
falsehood? As he considered the question in all its bearings he
assured himself over and over again that there would be now no fear
of that rival;--and yet he had such fears, and hated Crosbie almost
as much as ever. It was a thousand pities, certainly, that the man
should have been made free by the death of his wife. But it could
hardly be that he should seek Lily again, or that Lily, if so sought,
should even listen to him. But yet there he was, free once more,--an
odious being, whom Johnny was determined to sacrifice to his
vengeance, if cause for such sacrifice should occur. And thus
thinking of the real truth of his love, he endeavoured to excuse
himself to himself from that charge of vagueness and laxness which
his friend Conway Dalrymple had brought against him. And then again
he accused himself of the same sin. If he had been positively in
earnest, with downright manly earnestness, would he have allowed the
thing to drag itself on with a weak uncertain life, as it had done
for the last two or three years? Lily Dale had been a dream to him in
his boyhood; and he had made a reality of his dream as soon as he had
become a man. But before he had been able, as a man, to tell his love
to the girl whom he had loved as a chi