ruck on his quick ear.

"Too late!" muttered Mat. "I must chance it, after all, with the garden
door."

Putting the key into his pocket again, as he said this, he walked back
to the fireplace. The moment after he got there, Mr. Blyth entered the
studio.

"I am quite shocked that you should have been so unceremoniously left
alone," said Valentine, whose naturally courteous nature prompted him to
be just as scrupulously polite in his behavior to his rough guest, as if
Mat had been a civilized gentleman of the most refined feeling and the
most exalted rank. "I am so sorry you should have been left, through
Zack's carelessness, without anybody to ask you to take a little
supper," continued Valentine, turning to the table. "Mrs. Blyth, my dear
sir (do take a sandwich!), desires me to express her best thanks for
your very pretty present (that is the brandy in the bottle next to you).
She admires the design (spongecake? Ah! you don't care about sweets),
and thinks the color of the center feathers--"

At this moment the door opened, and Mr. Blyth, abruptly closing his
lips, looked towards it with an expression of the blankest astonishment;
for he beheld Madonna entering the painting-room in company with Zack.

Valentine had been persuaded to let the deaf and dumb girl accept the
scarlet pouch by his wife; but neither she nor Zack had said a word
before him upstairs about taking Madonna into the studio. When the
painter was well out of earshot, young Thorpe had confided to Mrs. Blyth
the new freak in which he wanted to engage; and, signing unscrupulously
to Madonna that she was wanted in the studio, to be presented to the
"generous man who had given her the tobacco-pouch," took her out of the
room without stopping to hear to the end the somewhat faint remonstrance
by which his proposition was met. To confess the truth, Mrs.
Blyth--seeing no great impropriety in the girl's being introduced to the
stranger, while Valentine was present in the room, and having moreover
a very strong curiosity to hear all she could about Zack's odd
companion--was secretly anxious to ascertain what impressions Madonna
would bring away of Mat's personal appearance and manners. And thus
it was that Zack, by seizing his opportunity at the right moment, and
exerting a little of that cool assurance in which he was never
very deficient, now actually entered the painting-room in a glow of
mischievous triumph with Madonna on his arm.

Valentine gave hi