Annabella glanced all round the room, with her handkerchief still at her nose, and gathered her magnificent silk dress close about her superb figure with her disengaged hand.

“What a horrid place!” she said faintly behind her handkerchief.  “Can’t you take some of the paint away?  I’m sure there’s oil on the floor.  How am I to get past that nasty table with the palette on it?  Why can’t you bring the picture down to the carriage, Frank?”

Advancing a few steps, and looking suspiciously about her while she spoke, her eyes fell on the chimney-piece.  An eau-de-Cologne bottle stood upon it, which she took up immediately with a languishing sigh.

It contained turpentine for washing brushes in.  Before I could warn her, she had sprinkled herself absently with half the contents of the bottle.  In spite of all the musk that now filled the room, the turpentine betrayed itself almost as soon as I cried “Stop!” Annabella, with a shriek of disgust, flung the bottle furiously into the fireplace.  Fortunately it was summer-time, or I might have had to echo the shriek with a cry of “Fire!”

“You wretch! you brute! you low, mischievous, swindling blackguard!” cried my amiable sister, shaking her skirts with all her might, “you have done this on purpose!  Don’t tell me!  I know you have.  What do you mean by pestering me to come to this dog-kennel of a place?” she continued, turning fiercely upon the partner of her existence and legitimate receptacle of all her superfluous wrath.  “What do you mean by bringing me here, to see how you have been swindled?  Yes, sir, swindled!  He has no more idea of painting than you have.  He has cheated you out of your money.  If he was starving tomorrow he would be the last man in England to make away with himself—­he is too great a wretch—­he is too vicious—­he is too lost to all sense of respectability—­he is too much of a discredit to his family.  Take me away!  Give me your arm directly!  I told you not to go near him from the first.  This is what comes of your horrid fondness for money.  Suppose Lady Malkinshaw does outlive him; suppose I do lose my legacy.  What is three thousand pounds to you?  My dress is ruined.  My shawl’s spoiled. He die!  If the old woman lives to the age of Methuselah, he won’t die.  Give me your arm.  No!  Go to my father.  I want medical advice.  My nerves are torn to pieces.  I’m giddy, faint, sick—­sick, Mr. Batterbury!”

Here she became hysterical, and vanished, leaving a mixed odor of musk and turpentine behind her, which preserved the memory of her visit for nearly a week afterward.

“Another scene in the drama of my life seems likely to close in before long,” thought I.  “No chance now of getting my amiable sister to patronize struggling genius.  Do I know of anybody else who will sit to me?  No, not a soul.  Having thus no portraits of other people to paint, what is it my duty, as a neglected artist, to do next?  Clearly to take a portrait of myself.”