his son
with the greater interest--wondered whether the glazed bloom of his
cheek had been transmitted from Sir David. That would be jolly to paint,
in the old man--the withered ruddiness of a winter apple, especially if
the eye were still alive and the white hair carried out the frosty look.
Arthur Ashmore's hair had a midsummer glow, but Lyon was glad his
commission had been to delineate the father rather than the son, in
spite of his never having seen the one and of the other being seated
there before him now in the happy expansion of liberal hospitality.

Arthur Ashmore was a fresh-coloured, thick-necked English gentleman, but
he was just not a subject; he might have been a farmer and he might have
been a banker: you could scarcely paint him in characters. His wife did
not make up the amount; she was a large, bright, negative woman, who had
the same air as her husband of being somehow tremendously new; a sort of
appearance of fresh varnish (Lyon could scarcely tell whether it came
from her complexion or from her clothes), so that one felt she ought to
sit in a gilt frame, suggesting reference to a catalogue or a
price-list. It was as if she were already rather a bad though expensive
portrait, knocked off by an eminent hand, and Lyon had no wish to copy
that work. The pretty woman on his right was engaged with her neighbour
and the gentleman on his other side looked shrinking and scared, so that
he had time to lose himself in his favourite diversion of watching face
after face. This amusement gave him the greatest pleasure he knew, and
he often thought it a mercy that the human mask did interest him and
that it was not less vivid than it was (sometimes it ran its success in
this line very close), since he was to make his living by reproducing
it. Even if Arthur Ashmore would not be inspiring to paint (a certain
anxiety rose in him lest if he should make a hit with her father-in-law
Mrs. Arthur should take it into her head that he had now proved himself
worthy to _aborder_ her husband); even if he had looked a little less
like a page (fine as to print and margin) without punctuation, he would
still be a refreshing, iridescent surface. But the gentleman four
persons off--what was he? Would he be a subject, or was his face only
the legible door-plate of his identity, burnished with punctual washing
and shaving--the least thing that was decent that you would know him by?

This face arrested Oliver Lyon: it struck him at