‘And when you add to that all the old woman’s money,’ said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, ‘you think that she might do?’

’For a picture, certainly.  I’m speaking of her simply as a model.  Could we not manage it?  Get her once here, without her mother knowing it, or Broughton, or anyone.  I’ve got the subject—­Jael and Sisera, you know.  I should like to put Musselboro in as Sisera, with the nail half driven in.’  Mrs Dobbs Broughton declared that the scheme was a great deal too wicked for her participation, but at last she promised to think of it.

‘You might as well come up and have a cigar,’ Dalrymple said, as he and his friend left Mrs Broughton’s house.  Johnny said that he would go up and have a cigar or two.  ’And now tell me what you think of Mrs Dobbs Broughton and her set,’ said Conway.

’Well; I’ll tell you what I think of them.  I think they stink of money, as people say; but I’m not sure that they’ve got any all the same.’

‘I should suppose he makes a large income.’

’Very likely, and perhaps spends more than he makes.  A good deal of it looked to me like make-believe.  There’s no doubt about the claret, but the champagne was execrable.  A man is a criminal to have such stuff handed round to his guests.  And there isn’t the ring of real gold about the house.’

‘I hate the ring of gold, as you call it,’ said the artist.

’So do I—­I hate it like poison; but if it is there, I like it to be true.  There is a sort of persons going now—­and one meets them out here and there every day in one’s life—­who are downright Brummagem as such at the very first moment.  My honoured lord and master, Sir Raffle, is one such.  There is no mistaking him.  Clap him down upon the counter, and he rings dull and untrue at once.  Pardon me, my dear Conway, if I say the same of your excellent friend Mr Dobbs Broughton.’

’I think you go a little too far, but I don’t deny it.  What you mean is, that he’s not a gentleman.’

’I mean a great deal more than that.  Bless you, when you come to talk of a gentleman, who is to define the word?  How do I know whether or no I’m a gentleman myself?  When I used to be in Burton Crescent, I was hardly a gentlemen then—­sitting at the same table with Mrs Roper and the Lupexes;—­do you remember them, and the lovely Amelia?’

‘I suppose you were a gentleman, then, as well as now?’

’You, if you had been painting duchesses then, with a studio in Kensington Gardens, would have said so, if you had happened to come across me.  I can’t define a gentleman, even in my own mind;—­but I can define a man with whom I think I can live pleasantly.’

‘And poor Dobbs doesn’t come within the line?’

’N-o, not quite; a very nice fellow, I’m quite sure, and I’m very much obliged to you for taking me there.’

’I never will take you to any house again.  And what did you think of the wife?’