of canvases on to the floor, and pitched clattering sketching-easels and stools into corners, and covered tables and chairs with the myriad colour-boxes, sketch-books, palettes of every shape and variety, brushes, bottles, all the snares that the ingenious marchand a couleurs spreads in the sight of the bird, and into which the bird, especially if he be, like Larry, a rich amateur, cheerfully hops.  He hardly was aware of what he was doing, his hot thoughts raced in his brain.  It seemed to him now to have been years ago that he saw her, in the grey light, riding towards him on Nancy.  She had said that he might paint her; that was all that he had thought of then.  Much had happened since then; the supreme thing had happened since then!  Nothing else really mattered, he thought, sitting down on the edge of a half-empty packing case, and lighting a cigarette, not even the shooting of Nancy.  He would give her a dozen Nancys if she wanted them!  The first and most important thing in the world was to see her again; and he had to arrange how, and when, and where he should paint her.  Obviously he must at once proceed to Mount Music.

There is a saying among Larry’s countrymen:  “If a man want a thing he mus’ have it!” Fortune had, so far, been kind to Larry, and those things that he had wanted sufficiently, he had had.  It now remained to be proved if the rule were to have an exception.

“I’m going over to Mount Music just now,” he said to Frederica at tea time.  “I want to see them all.  Will you come, Aunt Freddy?”

Aunt Freddy looked perturbed.

“You haven’t seen Cousin Dick yet, have you?”

“No.  How could I?  He wasn’t out.  I’ve seen no one yet but Christian.”

His voice lingered on the beloved name, beloved, consciously, since so few hours.

But Aunt Freddy was not apt to perceive fine shades, and she was, moreover, occupied with the framing of a warning.

“You know that Cousin Dick is a good deal changed since you saw him?” she began.  “He had a sort of heart attack about a year ago—­Dr. Mangan was with him, luckily.  They have to try and keep him very quiet, and the worst of it is that so little puts him out.”

“Well, I shan’t put him out, shall I?” said Larry, confidently, beginning on a third slice of cake, love not having, so far, impaired his appetite.

“He was fearfully put out about your selling to the tenants.  He said young Mangan had no right to advise you to sell so low.  He told me that even Dr. Mangan was quite against his doing so.”

Miss Coppinger regarded her nephew with anxiety.  After four years of absence, one never knew exactly how much a young man might not have changed.  That little, upturned, golden moustache might not by any means be the whole of it.  The ice barrier had been forgotten in the excitement of his return, but even though she understood—­and tried not to feel that the fact had its mitigations—­that