m, and who had never even sent a work to the Academy--never even
tried to enter. Their work was not of an ambitious order, but it was
well paid.

Amaryllis did not for a moment anticipate success as an artist, nor
think to take the world by storm with her talent. Her one only hope was
to get a few pounds now and then--she would have sold twenty sketches
for ten shillings--to save her father from insult, and to give her
mother the mere necessities of dress she needed.

No thought of possible triumph, nor was she sustained by an
overmastering love of art; she was inspired by her heart, not her
genius.

Had circumstances been different she would not have earnestly practised
drawing; naturally she was a passive rather than an active artist.

She loved beauty for its own sake--she loved the sunlight, the grass and
trees, the gleaming water, the colours of the fields and of the sky. To
listen to the running water was to her a dear delight, to the wind in
the high firs, or caught in the wide-stretching arms of the oak; she
rested among these things, they were to her mind as sleep to the body.
The few good pictures she had seen pleased her, but did not rouse the
emotion the sunlight caused; artificial music was enjoyable, but not
like the running stream. It said nothing--the stream was full of
thought.

No eager desire to paint like that or play like that was awakened by
pictures or music; Amaryllis was a passive and not an active artist by
nature. And I think that is the better part; at least, I know it is a
thousand times more pleasure to me to see a beautiful thing than to
write about it. Could I choose I would go on seeing beautiful things,
and not writing.

Amaryllis had no ambition whatever for name or fame; to be silent in the
sunshine was enough for her. By chance she had inherited the Flamma
talent--she drew at once without effort or consideration; it was not so
much to her as it is to me to write a letter.

The thought to make use of her power did not occur to her until the
preceding Christmas. Roast beef and plum pudding were a bitter mockery
at Coombe Oaks--a sham and cold delusion, cold as snow. A "merry
Christmas"--holly berries, mistletoe--and behind these--debt. Behind the
glowing fire, written in the flames--debt; in the sound of the distant
chimes--debt. Now be merry over the plum-pudding while the wolves gnash
their teeth, wolves that the strongest bars cannot keep out.

Immediately the sacred day w