’"My story, I perceive, cannot begin where yours breaks off.  I first became acquainted with you in the studio of a famous painter named Wilderspin, one of the noblest-minded and most admirable men now breathing, but a great eccentric.”

’"Why, Mr. D’Arcy, I never was in a studio in my life until to-day,” I said.

’"You mean, Miss Wynne, that you were not consciously there,” he said.  “But in that studio you certainly were, and the artist, who reverenced you as a being from another world, was painting your face in a beautiful picture.  While he was doing this you were taken seriously ill, and your life was despaired of.  It was then that I brought you into the country, and here you have been living and benefiting by the kind services of Mrs. Titwing for a long time.”

’"And you know nothing of my history previously to seeing me in the London studio?” I asked.

’"All that I could ever learn about that,” said he, in what seemed to me a rather evasive tone, “I had to gather from the incoherent and rambling talk of Wilderspin, a religious enthusiast whose genius is very nearly akin to mania.  He was so struck by you that he actually believed you to be not a corporeal woman at all; he believed you had been sent from the spirit-world by his dead mother to enable him to paint a great picture.”

’"Oh, I must see him, and make him tell me all,” I said.

’"Yes,” said he, “but not yet.”

‘What Mr. D’Arcy told me,’ said Winnie, ’affected me so deeply that I remained silent for a long time.  Then came a thought which made me say,

’"You. too, are a painter, Mr. D’Arcy?”

’"Yes,” he said.

’"During the months that I have been living here have you used me as your model?”

’"No; but that was not because I did not wish to do so.”

’Then he suddenly looked in my face and said,

’"Is your family entirely Welsh, Miss Wynne?”

’"Entirely,” I said.  “But why did you not use me as your model, Mr. D’Arcy?”

’"Poor Wilderspin believed you to be a spiritual body,” he said; “I did not.  I knew that you were a young lady in an unconscious condition.  To have painted you in such a condition and without the possibility of getting your consent would have been sacrilege, even if I had painted you as a Madonna.”

’I could not speak, his words and tone were so tender.  He broke the silence by saying,

’"Miss Wynne, there is one thing in connection with you that puzzles me very much.  You speak of yourself as though you were a kind of Welsh peasant girl, and yet your conversation—­well, I mustn’t tell you what I think of that.”

’This made me laugh outright, for ladies who called on Miss Dalrymple used to make the same remark.

’"Mr. D’Arcy,” I said, “you are harbouring the greatest little impostor in the British Islands.  I am the mere mocking-bird of one of the most cultivated women living.  My true note is that of a simple Welsh bird.”