with a painting-rag, lay beside
the ink-stand.

'I must make haste,' he thought, 'or she will be bothering me again.'

He looked at the letter, which was still unfinished. Meanwhile he had
absently deposited the parcel on the floor, where it rested against
the leg of the table.

'Another page will finish it. Hotel Bristol, Rome--till the end of the
week?--if I only could be _sure_ that was what Butlin said!'

He paced up and down, frowning, in an impotent distress, trying to
make his brain work as usual. On his visit of the afternoon he had
asked the lawyers for the Findon's address; but his memory now was of
the worst.

Suddenly he wheeled round, sat down, and took up a book which had been
lying face downwards on the table. It was the 'Memoirs of Benjamin
Haydon,' and he opened it at one of the last pages--

'About an hour after, Miss Haydon entered the painting-room, and
found her father stretched out dead, before the easel on which stood,
blood-sprinkled, his unfinished picture. A portrait of his wife stood
on a smaller easel facing his large picture.'

* * * * *

The man reading, paused.

'He had suffered much more than I,' he thought--'but his wife had
helped him--stood by him--'

And he passed on to the next page--to the clause in Haydon's will
which runs--'My dearest wife, Mary Haydon, has been a good, dear,
and affectionate wife to me--a heroine in adversity and an angel in
peace.'

'And he repaid her by blowing his brains out,' thought Fenwick,
contemptuously. 'But he was mad--of course he was mad. We are all
mad--when it comes to this.'

And he turned back, as though in fascination, to the page before, to
the last entry in Haydon's Journal.

'21st.--Slept horribly. Prayed in sorrow and got
up in agitation.
'22d.--God forgive me. Amen.'

'Amen!' repeated Fenwick, aloud, as he dropped the book. The word
echoed in the empty room. He covered his eyes with his right hand,
leaning his arm on the table.

The other hand, as it fell beside him, came in contact with the
parcel which was propped against the table. His touch told him that
it contained a picture--an unframed canvas. A vague curiosity awoke in
him. He took it up, peered at the address, then began to finger with
and unwrap it.

Suddenly--he bent over it. What was it!

He tore off the shawl, and some brown paper beneath it, lifted the
thing upon the table, so that the light of the one candle fell