ted six months after the Shenstone visit, had proved the
finest bit of work he had as yet accomplished. He had painted the
lovely American, in creamy white satin, standing on a dark oak
staircase, one hand resting on the balustrade, the other, full of
yellow roses, held out towards an unseen friend below. Behind and above
her shone a stained-glass window, centuries old, the arms, crest, and
mottoes of the noble family to whom the place belonged, shining thereon
in rose-coloured and golden glass. He had wonderfully caught the charm
and vivacity of the girl. She was gaily up-to-date, and frankly
American, from the crown of her queenly little head, to the point of
her satin shoe; and the suggestiveness of placing her in surroundings
which breathed an atmosphere of the best traditions of England's
ancient ancestral homes, the fearless wedding of the new world with the
old, the putting of this sparkling gem from the new into the beautiful
mellow setting of the old and there showing it at its best,--all this
was the making of the picture. People smiled, and said the painter had
done on canvas what he shortly intended doing in reality; but the tie
between artist and sitter never grew into anything closer than a
pleasant friendship, and it was the noble owner of the staircase and
window who eventually persuaded Miss Lister to remain in surroundings
which suited her so admirably.

One story about that portrait Jane had heard discussed more than once
in circles where both were known. Pauline Lister had come to the first
sittings wearing her beautiful string of pearls, and Garth had painted
them wonderfully, spending hours over the delicate perfecting of each
separate gleaming drop. Suddenly one day he seized his palette-knife,
scraped the whole necklace off the canvas with a stroke and, declared
she must wear her rose-topazes in order to carry out his scheme of
colour. She was wearing her rose-topazes when Jane saw the picture in
the Academy, and very lovely they looked on the delicate whiteness of
her neck. But people who had seen Garth's painting of the pearls
maintained that that scrape of the palette-knife had destroyed work
which would have been the talk of the year. And Pauline Lister, just
after it had happened, was reported to have said, with a shrug of her
pretty shoulders: "Schemes of colour are all very well. But he scraped
my pearls off the canvas because some one who came in hummed a tune
while looking at the picture