’Now, Conway, all that is thoroughly unfair.  The would-be author talks of his would-be book to everybody.  I have never talked of Miss Dale to anyone but you, and one or two very old family friends.  And from year to year, and from month to month, I have done all that has been in my power to win her.  I don’t think I shall ever succeed, and yet I am as determined about it as I was when I first began it—­or rather much more so.  If I do not marry Lily, I shall never marry at all, and if anybody were to tell me tomorrow that she had made up her mind to have me, I should well nigh go mad for joy.  But I am not going to give up all my life for love.  Indeed the less I can bring myself to give up for it, the better I shall think of myself.  Now I’ll go away and call on old Lady Demolines.’

‘And flirt with her daughter.’

’Yes;—­flirt with her daughter, if I get the opportunity.  Why shouldn’t I flirt with her daughter?’

‘Why not, if you like it?’

’I don’t like it—­not particularly, that is; because the young lady is not very pretty, nor yet very graceful, not yet very wise.’

‘She is pretty after a fashion,’ said the artist, ’and if not wise, she is at any rate clever.’

‘Nevertheless, I do not like her,’ said John Eames.

‘Then why do you go there?’

’One has to be civil to people though they are neither pretty nor wise.  I don’t mean to insinuate that Miss Demolines is particularly bad, or indeed that she is worse than young ladies in general.  I only abused her because there was an insinuation in what you said, that I was going to amuse myself with Miss Demolines in the absence of Miss Dale.  The one thing has nothing to do with the other thing.  Nothing that I shall say to Miss Demolines will at all militate against my loyalty to Lily.’

’All right, old fellow;—­I didn’t mean to put you on your purgation.  I want you to look at that sketch.  Do you know for whom it is intended?’ Johnny took up a scrap of paper, and having scrutinised it for a minute or two declared that he had not the slightest idea who was represented.  ‘You know the subject—­the story that is intended to be told?’ said Dalrymple.

’Upon my word, I don’t.  There’s some old fellow seems to be catching it over the head; but it’s all so confused, I can’t make much of it.  The woman seems to be uncommon angry.’

‘Do you ever read your Bible?’

’Ah dear! not as often as I ought to do.  Al, I see; it’s Sisera.  I never could quite believe that story.  Jael might have killed Captain Sisera in his sleep—­for which, by-the-by, she ought to have been hung, and she might possibly have done it with a hammer and a nail.  But she could not have driven it through, and staked him to the ground.’

’I’ve warrant enough for putting it into a picture, at any rate.  My Jael there is intended for Miss Van Siever.’

‘Miss Van Siever!  Well, it is like her.  Has she sat for it?’