art was getting the worst of it. The overpowering gloom
pervading the clammy air, rendered still more intense by the height of
the window from the floor, reduced all the pictures that were standing
around to the wizened feebleness of corpses on end. The shadowy parts
of the room behind the different easels were veiled in a brown vapour,
precluding all estimate of the extent of the studio, and only subdued
in the foreground by the ruddy glare from an open stove of Dutch tiles.
Somerset's footsteps had been so noiseless over the carpeting of the
stairs and landing, that his father was unaware of his presence; he
continued at his work as before, which he performed by the help of a
complicated apparatus of lamps, candles, and reflectors, so arranged as
to eke out the miserable daylight, to a power apparently sufficient for
the neutral touches on which he was at that moment engaged.

The first thought of an unsophisticated stranger on entering that room
could only be the amazed inquiry why a professor of the art of colour,
which beyond all other arts requires pure daylight for its exercise,
should fix himself on the single square league in habitable Europe to
which light is denied at noonday for weeks in succession.

'O! it's you, George, is it?' said the Academician, turning from the
lamps, which shone over his bald crown at such a slant as to reveal
every cranial irregularity. 'How are you this morning? Still a dead
silence about your grand castle competition?'

Somerset told the news. His father duly congratulated him, and added
genially, 'It is well to be you, George. One large commission to attend
to, and nothing to distract you from it. I am bothered by having a dozen
irons in the fire at once. And people are so unreasonable.--Only this
morning, among other things, when you got your order to go on with your
single study, I received a letter from a woman, an old friend whom I
can scarcely refuse, begging me as a great favour to design her a set of
theatrical costumes, in which she and her friends can perform for some
charity. It would occupy me a good week to go into the subject and do
the thing properly. Such are the sort of letters I get. I wish, George,
you could knock out something for her before you leave town. It is
positively impossible for me to do it with all this work in hand, and
these eternal fogs to contend against.'

'I fear costumes are rather out of my line,' said the son. 'However,
I'll do what I can