at all to
her. It might be inexperience, it might be something loftier. But, at any
rate, if she were to be bribed, it must be with goods of another kind.

As to himself, he only knew that from his first sight of her at the Hunt
Ball, she had filled his thoughts. Her delicate, pale beauty, lit by
those vivacious eyes; so quiet, so feminine, yet with its suggestion of
something unconquerable, moving in a world apart--he could not define
it in any such words; but there it was, the attraction, the lure.
Something difficult; something delightful! A dear woman, a woman to be
loved; and yet a thorn hedge surrounding her--how else can one put the
eternal challenge, the eternal chase?

But as three parts of love is hope, and hope is really the mother of
invention, Tatham, though full of anxiety, was also, like General Trochu,
full of plans. He had that morning made his mother despatch an invitation
to one of the great painters of the day; a man who ruled the beauties of
the moment _en Sultan_; painted whom he would; when he would; and at what
price he would. But while those who were dying to be painted by him must
often wait for years, and put up with manners none too polite, there were
others who avenged them; women, a few, very few women, whom the great
man, strange to say, sighed to paint, and sighed in vain. Such women were
generally women of a certain age; none of your soft-cheeked beauties. And
Lady Tatham was one of them. The great artist had begged her to let
herself be painted by him. And Victoria had negligently replied that,
perhaps, at Duddon, some day, there might be time. Several reminders,
launched from the Chelsea studio, had not brought her to the point; but
now for her son's sake she had actually named a time; and a jubilant
telegram from London had clenched the bargain. The great man was to
arrive in a fortnight from now, for a week's visit; and Tatham had in his
pocket a note from Lady Tatham to Mrs. Penfold requesting the pleasure of
her company and that of her two daughters at dinner, to meet Mr. Louis
Delorme, the day after his arrival.

And all this, because, at a mention of the illustrious name, Lydia had
looked up with a flutter of enthusiasm. "You know him? How lucky for you!
He's _wonderful_! I? Oh, no. How should I? I saw him once in the
distance--he was giving away prizes. I didn't get one--alack! That's the
nearest I shall ever come to him."

Tatham chuckled happily as he thought of it.

"Sh