er.

"Precisely--they don't dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we have not
once seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of the Mangia. Can
you conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has never yet dared to write
it home to her aunts at Bonchurch."

Mrs. Lombard accepted in silence this remarkable statement of her
views, and her husband, with a malicious smile at Wyant's embarrassment,
planted himself suddenly before the young man.

"And now," said he, "do you want to see my Leonardo?"

"DO I?" cried Wyant, on his feet in a flash.

The doctor chuckled. "Ah," he said, with a kind of crooning
deliberation, "that's the way they all behave--that's what they all come
for." He turned to his daughter with another variation of mockery in his
smile. "Don't fancy it's for your beaux yeux, my dear; or for the mature
charms of Mrs. Lombard," he added, glaring suddenly at his wife, who had
taken up her knitting and was softly murmuring over the number of her
stitches.

Neither lady appeared to notice his pleasantries, and he continued,
addressing himself to Wyant: "They all come--they all come; but many are
called and few are chosen." His voice sank to solemnity. "While I live,"
he said, "no unworthy eye shall desecrate that picture. But I will
not do my friend Clyde the injustice to suppose that he would send an
unworthy representative. He tells me he wishes a description of the
picture for his book; and you shall describe it to him--if you can."

Wyant hesitated, not knowing whether it was a propitious moment to put
in his appeal for a photograph.

"Well, sir," he said, "you know Clyde wants me to take away all I can of
it."

Doctor Lombard eyed him sardonically. "You're welcome to take away all
you can carry," he replied; adding, as he turned to his daughter: "That
is, if he has your permission, Sybilla."

The girl rose without a word, and laying aside her work, took a key from
a secret drawer in one of the cabinets, while the doctor continued in
the same note of grim jocularity: "For you must know that the picture is
not mine--it is my daughter's."

He followed with evident amusement the surprised glance which Wyant
turned on the young girl's impassive figure.

"Sybilla," he pursued, "is a votary of the arts; she has inherited her
fond father's passion for the unattainable. Luckily, however, she also
recently inherited a tidy legacy from her grandmother; and having seen
the Leonardo, on which its discoverer