Beauty like hers is genius.
D. G. Rossetti.

Lucy slept little that night. At the first flush of the magnificent summer dawn she was astir, making her preparations for the traveller\'s breakfast.

She had changed suddenly, from a demure and rather frigid maiden to a loving and anxious woman. Perhaps the signet-ring on her middle finger was a magic ring, and had wrought the charm.

Frank\'s notice to quit had been so short, that he had been obliged to apply for various necessaries to Darrell, who, with[Pg 204] Lord Watergate, had supplied him with the main features of a tropical outfit. His ship sailed that day, at noon, so there was little time to be lost. He came over at an unconscionably early hour to Number 20B, for there was much to be said and little opportunity for saying it.

Lucy, displaying a truly feminine mixture of the tender and the practical, packed his bag, strapped his rugs, and put searching questions as to his preparations for travel. Already, womanlike, she had taken him under her wing, and henceforward the minutest detail of his existence would be more precious to her than anything on earth.

Gertrude, when she had kissed the vivid young face in sisterly farewell, saw the lovers drive off to the station and wondered inwardly at their calmness.

Later in the day, coming into the studio, she found Lucy quietly engaged in putting a negative into the printing-frame.

"It is his," she said, looking up with a smile; "I never felt that I had a right to do it before."

At luncheon, Phyllis reminded her that to-night was the night of Mr. Darrell\'s [Pg 205]conversazione at the Berkeley Galleries, for which he had sent them two tickets.

"It\'s no good expecting Lucy to go; you will have to take me, Gerty," she announced.

Gertrude had a great dislike to going, and she said—

"Can\'t Fanny take you?"

"Edward and I are dining at the Septimus Pratts\'," replied Fanny.

After much hesitation, she and her betrothed had had to resign themselves to the inevitable, and dispense with the services of a chaperon; a breach of decorum which Mr. Marsh, in particular, deplored.

"Are you very anxious about this party?" pleaded Gertrude.

"Oh Gerty, of course. And if you won\'t take me, I\'ll go alone," cried Phyllis, with unusual vehemence.

Gertrude was indignant at her sister\'s tone; then reflected that it was, perhaps, hard on Phyllis, to cut off one of her few festivities.

Phyllis, indeed, had not been very well of late, and demanded more spoiling than ever. She coughed constantly, and her eyes were unnaturally bright.

[Pg 206]

Gertrude ended by submitting to the sacrifice, and at ten o\'clock she and Phyllis found themselves in Bond Street, where the rooms were already thronged with people.

Phyllis had blazed into a degree of beauty that startled even her sister, and made her the frequent mark for observation in that brilliant gathering.

Her grey dress was cut low, displaying the white and rounded slenderness of her shoulders and arms; the soft brown hair was coiled about the perfect head in a manner that afforded a view of the neck and its graceful action; her eyes shone like stars; her cheeks glowed exquisitely pink. Wherever she went, went forth a sweet strong fragrance, the breath of a great spray of tuberose which was fastened in her bodice, and which had arrived for her that day from an unnamed donor.

Darrell\'s greeting to both the sisters had been of the briefest. He had shaken hands unsmilingly with Phyllis; he and Gertrude had brought their finger-tips into chill and momentary contact, without so much as lifting their eyes, and Gertrude had felt humiliated at her presence there.

She had not seen Darrell since his Private[Pg 207] View, more than six weeks ago; and now, as she stood talking to Lord Watergate, her eye, guided by a nameless curiosity, an unaccountable fascination, sought him out. He was looking ill, she thought, as she watched him standing in his host\'s place, near the doorway, chatting to an ugly old woman, whom she knew to be the Duchess of Kilburne; ill, and very unhappy. Happiness indeed, as she instinctively felt, is not for such as he—for the egotist and the sensualist.

Her acute feminine sense, sharpened perhaps by personal soreness, had pierced to the second-rateness of the man and his art. Beneath his arrogance and air of assured success, she read the signs of an almost craven hunger for pre-eminence; of a morbid self-consciousness; an insatiable vanity. And for all the stupendous cleverness of his workmanship, she failed to detect in his work the traces of those qualities which, combined with far less skill than his, can make greatness.

As for her own relations to Darrell, the positions of the two had shifted a little since the first. In the brief flashes of intercourse which they had known, a drama[Pg 208] had silently enacted itself; a war without words or weapons, in which, so far, she had come off victor. For Sidney had ceased to regard her as merely ridiculous; and she, on her part, was no longer cowed by his aggressive personality, by the all-seeing, languid glance, the arrogant, indifferent manner. They stood on a level platform of unspoken, yet open distaste; which, should occasion arise, might blaze into actual defiance.

Lord Watergate, as I have said, was talking to Gertrude; but his glance, as she was quick to observe, strayed constantly toward Phyllis. She had wondered before this, as to the measure of his admiration for her sister; it seemed to her that he paid her the tribute of a deeper interest than that which her beauty and her brightness would, in the natural course of things, exact.

As for Phyllis, she was enjoying a triumph which many a professional beauty might have envied. People flocked round her, scheming for introductions, staring at her in open admiration, laughing at her whimsical sallies.

"That young person has a career before her."

[Pg 209]

"Who is she?"

"Oh, one of Darrell\'s discoveries. Works at a photographer\'s, they say."

"Darrell is painting her portrait."

"No, not her portrait; but a study of \'Cressida.\'"

"Cressida!
"\'There\'s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks——\'"

"Hush, hush!"

Such floating spars of talk had drifted past Gertrude\'s corner, and had been caught, not by her, but by her companion.

Lord Watergate frowned, as he mentally finished the quotation, which struck him as being in shocking taste. He had adopted, unconsciously, a protective attitude towards the Lorim............