se of the element of
race. He found himself seeing the immemorial Jewess in her hold up a
candle in a crammed back shop. There was no candle indeed and his studio
was not crammed, and it had never occurred to him before that she was a
grand-daughter of Israel save on the general theory, so stoutly held by
several clever people, that few of us are not under suspicion. The late
Rudolf Roth had at least been, and his daughter was visibly her father's
child; so that, flanked by such a pair, good Semitic presumptions
sufficiently crowned the mother. Receiving Miriam's sharp, satiric
shower without shaking her shoulders she might at any rate have been the
descendant of a tribe long persecuted. Her blandness was beyond all
baiting; she professed she could be as still as a mouse. Miriam, on the
other side of the room, in the tranquil beauty of her attitude--"found"
indeed, as Nick had said--watched her a little and then declared she had
best have been locked up at home. Putting aside her free account of the
dangers to which her mother exposed her, it wasn't whimsical to imagine
that within the limits of that repose from which the Neville-Nugents
never wholly departed the elder lady might indeed be a trifle fidgety
and have something on her mind. Nick presently mentioned that it
wouldn't be possible for him to "send home" his second performance; and
he added, in the exuberance of having already got a little into relation
with his work, that perhaps this didn't matter, inasmuch as--if Miriam
would give him his time, to say nothing of her own--a third and a fourth
masterpiece might also some day very well struggle into the light. His
model rose to this without conditions, assuring him he might count upon
her till she grew too old and too ugly and that nothing would make her
so happy as that he should paint her as often as Romney had painted the
celebrated Lady Hamilton. "Ah Lady Hamilton!" deprecated Mrs. Rooth;
while Miriam, who had on occasion the candour of a fine acquisitiveness,
wished to know what particular reason there might be for his not letting
them have the picture he was now beginning.

"Why I've promised it to Peter Sherringham--he has offered me money for
it," Nick replied. "However, he's welcome to it for nothing, poor chap,
and I shall be delighted to do the best I can for him."

Mrs. Rooth, still prowling, stopped in the middle of the room at this,
while her daughter echoed: "He offered you money--just as we came