y of money, he set
himself to work out a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight of a
May-day demonstration. The canvas was gigantic, and he strove to depict
a mob of strikers straggling out of the Park after their great meeting,
with elements of fashion caught in this _melee_ of labour. The pictorial
irony had greatly interested him, and he felt that this painting on the
grand scale was being sincerely born out of his own emotion, that it
would trumpet out a warning to the age.

The beginnings were full of promise, and he decided to stake everything
on it. But for so realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner he
needed to make a great many sketches on the spot. So, through the
friendly offices of an amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a
convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and made free use of the
privilege. The master of the house, a nobleman of the old school, who at
first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his own dining-room,
proved on acquaintance to be singularly bluff and genial, sometimes
almost slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome and at his ease, bidding
him come and go as he pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning
the room into a studio." And this charming nobleman had likewise a
charming daughter, who sometimes came for a minute or two to talk to
Wyndham and interest herself in the sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant
figure of a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the world. She was
sunny and friendly, yet naturally on a pedestal. She was clear-headed
and capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham was the subject of
many graceful little attentions. If he came in the morning she saw that
his glass of sherry and biscuit was never neglected; in the afternoon
she presided over tea in the drawing-room and expected him to appear
there.

Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell himself that he was in love with
her. A girl like that must naturally be reserved for a great match, as
regards both position and fortune. He could not think of her save as
presiding over a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent
yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the rewards of painters, so Wyndham
kept his mind sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was there. Even
so, the intervals between his appearances grew wider and wider. And
when, after some couple of years of toil, discipline, searching, it had
come home to him that in this terrible picture he had undertaken a task
beyond hi