"Thank you. It is much better coffee than I ever tasted before. How did you learn, please, to make such good coffee?" "Perhaps because I had no one to teach me, and have generally had to make it for myself."

"I think you are exceedingly clever, to be able to make coffee, as well as to model all those beautiful busts. Is that an apron, that great thing there?" "Yes; that is what I work in sometimes."

"Please put it on. How funny you look in it! Now please model me." "With pleasure. Sit as you are, and lift your eyes and look at me."

He took a lump of moist clay, and standing before her, began rapidly to work it up with his hands, first poking two holes in it with his fingers.

"What are the holes?"
"Those are your eyes."

The lithe nervous fingers of the sculptor went deftly here and there over the clay, Lady Mary looking on the while with breathless interest. A touch here, and she saw the ripples of her hair take form in a moment; a touch there, and she saw her little saucy mouth; a touch on either side, and two tiny ears grew under the marvellous fingers of the artist; and, more wonderful than all, the laughing, half-doubting expression with which she watched him at work was caught and stamped upon the clay. In a very few minutes the work was done. It was not a portrait, of course, but it was a sketch, and a very clever one, and Lady Mary was entranced.

"Oh, that is wonderful," she said, walking round and round the bust. "Will you give this to me?"

"I would rather keep it, if you will let me."

On a table beside Lady Mary lay two or three casts of hands in plaster. "What are these ?" she said.

"They are casts of hands that I have just been taking."

"Are they taken from living hands ?" "Yes."

"Some of them are very beautiful. This, now, is a lovely hand."

She took up and examined a small delicate cast, taken evidently from the hand of a young girl.

"I have seen a hand which I should like to add to my collection; it would be a more beautiful one than any there," said the sculptor, and a slight tremor disturbed the Vandyck beard.

"Do you mean my hand ?" asked her ladyship, mildly.

"Yes."

"You may take a cast from it if you like."

"Oh! thank you: will you please give me your hand ?"

She laid her hand in his.

The Vandyck beard absolutely shook. He shaped the hand so as to show most fully the delicate perfection of its form; then overlaid it with plaster, putting it on first with his hand and then with the spatula.

"Please say again how long you think it takes to drive from the Mansion-House." "It took me once an hour and twenty minutes."

"They have been away a long while now. I should think they would be home almost immediately." And Lady Mary gave a little frightened look at the hand which was cased in plaster. "I can't get away till this comes off, can I?”

66

'No; and it can not come off until the plaster is hard, or the cast will be spoiled. But please do not be frightened; it is hardening, and I shall draw it off in a moment."

"There; now I think it is quite hard," she said presently.

"Yes, it will do now. Please give me your hand again, and be sure you cry out if I hurt you."

"I shall be certain to do that," answered her ladyship.

He began gently to draw off the mould. There was a sound of carriage wheels coming up the hill.

"Oh, please make haste! I am sure that is the carriage: the horse goes down hard on his hind-hoof."

But the mould was stiff and intractable, and would not leave the hand.

The sculptor saw fear in the blue eyes

of his model, and tried to hasten; but it was no use: the mould would not come.

The sound of wheels drew nearer, and a distinct peculiarity was audible in the way in which the horse put one of his hoofs to the ground.

"Oh, do pull! pull hard! Don't mind hurting me," pleaded Lady Mary.

There was no help for it, though the sculptor's heart bled, and his brown eyes were filled with concern.

"I'll hurt you as little as possible," he said. Then he gave a little tug, and her ladyship a little scream, and the mould was off.

"Has it hurt you very much?" he asked.

"Oh no," she said. "It is quite well now. But I mustn't stay another second. The carriage is stopping at the door."

She let him, however, take the little bruised hand for an instant; and then through the window, and on to the wall, as with the soft, noiseless wings of a dove; and, glancing back once as she pressed the lawn in her flight, ran a dead-heat with the False Prophet at the veranda.

The reader who has his moral sense properly developed and I trust that there is no reader of this Magazine who has not his moral sense properly developed-will have no difficulty in perceiving that all this was exceedingly improper. Matters were of course moving at a speed the reverse of sober in a direction the reverse of wise; but even at this stage Lady Mary might have mended them had she chosen to do so. She ought to have gone straight and given a personal explanation to her aunts. She should have selected a fitting opportunity after luncheon (while the Honorable Ethel read Don Quixote in the original with the help of a Spanish dictionary, and the Honorable Susan embroidered blankets for the Italian greyhound) to offer to them some modest and maidenly observations somewhat in this fashion:

"Dear aunts, there has lately come a sculptor to the studio in the next garden. He is young, and, I must confess, rather good-looking, particularly as he wears his beard after the manner of Vandyck. You have perhaps observed, Aunt Ethel and Aunt Susan, that the studio is built close to the boundary wall between the two gardens, and as one of the windows overlooks your garden, it follows that when the sculptor is engaged on his mod

elling in the studio, and I am engaged on my drawing in the garden, the sculptor can scarcely avoid seeing me, and I can hardly avoid seeing the sculptor. I mention this to you because I am desirous of knowing whether it is an arrangement which meets with your entire approval. You are aware, dear aunts, how anxious papa is that I should make progress with my studies in art, and it has occurred to me that if, after inquiries made by you into the antecedents, the family, and the personal character of the young sculptor, you should arrive at the conclusion that no possible harm could result from my becoming acquainted with him, I might through such acquaintance, and always of course under your kind and watchful eyes, derive much useful assistance in those studies in which, for the sake of dear papa, it is my sincere desire to excel."

This, no doubt, would have been the natural and proper course for Lady Mary to take. Her aunts might then have followed up the matter in this wise: They might have left their cards at the studio, or perhaps have commenced by instructing Charles Edward to observe the movements of the young sculptor when he left the studio, with a view to ascertain whether he ate his luncheon at the tavern at the bottom of the mews, or at the eminently respectable pastry-cook's in the High Street. The result of the preliminary inquiry being satisfactory, they might have advanced a step, and in the course of a few weeks, having previously bowed to him in the street, and occasionally, perhaps, given him a more neighborly greeting in the garden, they might have sent him an invitation to five-o'clock tea, when he, having borrowed a frock-coat from one friend and a hat with a respectable nap from another, would have presented himself in the drawing-room, where, while the Honorable Ethel plied him with warm weak tea, and wondered (mentally) why sculptors in the embryonic stage wore such queerly fitting coats, the Honorable Susan would have questioned him as to the best and most economic means of keeping Italian greyhounds warm in winter; and when the tea-pot was on the point of running dry, Lady Mary, in a neat black gown, would have been requested to come forward, and have been introduced as "Our young niece, Lady Mary Talbot, who is pursuing her studies, Mr. Hinton, at South Kensington."

"Just so!" exclaims the reader with the properly developed moral sense. "That is precisely the way in which it ought to have been done."

It comforts me to hope that the feelings of the moral reader would be partially soothed could he see at what a prodigious rate I am blushing while I write that that is precisely the way in which it was not done.

So far from fairly and fully explaining matters to her aunts, Lady Mary told them positively nothing; but said to herself, "I think the F. P. and the B." (the initial letters of the opprobrious epithets she had applied to the honorable ladies) "are better out of this." And the intimacy between her ladyship and the sculptor, instead of declining, increased, and the meetings over the garden wall grew to be of daily occurrence. Her ladyship, seeing that the sculptor was poor, had represented herself to be poor likewise; and as the marquis derived most of his income from a nearly exhausted coal field, she had told him that her father was a coal merchant, and that she herself had thought of training for a governess. He, on his side, painted his future in glowing terms, and told her with emphasis what magnificent sums Mr. Boehm received for his statuary. All this they kept to themselves.

One morning, seeing him put on his best coat instead of his apron, she called out, "Where are you going?"

"I am going to find a model."
'A man model ?"

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"Hadn't you better do so?"
"Will you be my model?"
Am I the model you want?"
"Yes."

"What is the work to be?"

"It is to be a statue of a wood-nymph. You should sit in the oak-tree as you were sitting on the day I first saw you, and I would model you from there." "I will do that."

And the work was begun that morning. Lady Mary climbed into her old seat, and the sculptor from his studio directed her how to pose herself; then, bringing his materials close to the window, he commenced at once to model. The work was continued the next day and the next, and so on from day to day and week to week, Lady Mary mounting into the oak every morning after breakfast-the weather was abnormally fine that summer-and the sculptor taking his place before the studio window. At favorable moments the little wood-nymph, whose sweet face and supple form were taking shape in the pliant clay, would steal to the window and give a wondering glance at the model. The sculp tor, viewing it with practiced eye, knew that he was doing a thousand times the best work he had ever done. The weeks slipped into months, and soft September

began to change, the leaves of the oak

"Yes."

"Is she a good model?"

in the orchard showing red, russet, and yellow. One night the moon shone, and Lady Mary walked in the garden withShe wore a pale blue dress of gossamer texture; one gold bracelet was on her arm, and two pink rose-buds in her hair.

What small thing is it that burns red on the other side of the wall? Is it the cigarette of the sculptor? Yes, that is what it is.

An hour passed, and the moon it shone, and still they stood together in the shadow of the nut tree. In his were her two hands, and face was near to face.

"The statue is nearly finished. I wonder who will buy it when you show it at the Academy," she said, softly.

"I shall not sell it," he answered. "It is late," she whispered. "They will be looking for me. You must let me go."

But he held her.

Wood-Nymph' is beyond doubt the most interesting piece of statuary in the exhibition. The young sculptor has surpassed by an immeasurable distance all his previous performances, and won for himself a place in the front rank of his profession. In a technical point of view the work is almost perfect, but infinitely finer than its finest technical qualities are the glow of feeling and the passion that give the look of life to the marble. The face and the form of 'The Wood-Nymph' are singularly beautiful, and Mr. Hinton is to be congratulated on his choice of a model. The work is finished with so minute a care in every part that we can not help thinking the artist must have found his task a deeply interesting and pleasurable one."

She took one from her hair and gave it him.

"If I were to go to-morrow, you would have forgotten me before the bud was faded," she said.

"Rose leaves pressed together keep their sweetness long; but your memory would be fresh with me when the leaves were tasteless dust," he answered.

He drew her a little closer, and there was a sound as when the tiniest wavelet breaks on a silver beach. But what noise was that that followed? Lady Mary trembled, and turned her head. There, in the centre of the right-hand path, stood the False Prophet, glaring coldly; in the centre of the left-hand path stood the Beast, coldly glaring.

Lady Mary paled, her blue eyes dilated, and the hands that the sculptor held in his grew cold. Then she wrested herself from him, and with one low cry of terror ran swiftly over the lawn.

The sculptor was at his place in the studio the next morning, but the model did not come. He was there the day following, but she came not. He looked for her on the third day, but the nest in the oak was empty. He waited and watched, but she never came again. He went back to his work then, working now from memory; but the memory was faultless, and in due time the statue was finished. On the 1st of May in the year following it had a place of honor in the Academy, and byand-by all London was talking of it. An

VOL. LXVIL-No. 401.-49

But from the hour that "The WoodNymph" left his chisel he had ceased to love his work; for the nest in the oak was there, but the bird came not in it any

more.

II.

One morning in July Hubert found the following note awaiting him at the studio:

"SIR,-I have seen and greatly admired your statue 'The Wood-Nymph' in the exhibition at Burlington House. I should very much like you to model a bust of my daughter, and am anxious, for special reasons, that the work should be put in hand at once. We go for a few weeks to the sea-side on Wednesday, and if you will accept the commission, and can spare time to visit us for a while, I shall, with very great pleasure, place my house at your disposal. Our address on and after Wednesday will be Ravenshoe, Redmonton. I am, sir, Yours faithfully,

"BALLATER."

"Lord Ballater, eh?" said Hubert, when he had read this letter. "That sounds rather well. He is a good friend of art, I believe, and said to be a pleasant old gentleman. I want a holiday, and am not particularly busy. I think I'll accept his lordship's invitation. I fancy I have been told that Lord Ballater has a very beautiful daughter, but I am very sure that that is no concern of mine. Even if circumstances were other than they are I hope I

know enough to be aware that a particularly wide gulf is fixed between sculptors and the daughters of noblemen. All things considered, however, if I am to model the lady, she may as well be good-looking."

So he packed a portmanteau-for the success of "The Wood-Nymph" had enabled him to procure the wherewithal to fill one-and took a train which carried him southward to Redmonton.

At five in the evening he alighted at the station, and sending his portmanteau before him, started to walk the three miles along the coast to Ravenshoe, his lordship's villa by the sea. The tide was flowing in, and the evening sun sparkled over the gently rippling waters, and made a shining path over the wide wet sands. Hubert clambered down the cliff, and walked along the beach, going out a little distance till he met the sea, and standing until the waves lapped his feet, and the white foam frothed over them. Far out at sea big ships lay idly at anchor, and little ships were spreading their sails to catch the rising breeze. The waters-green and blue and gray as the light fell upon them-were level and glassy smooth in-shore, ruffled and dimpled a little further off, and just passing into foam-tipped wavelets far out in mid-ocean, where the wind played freely over their tops. Hubert was moody in those days, as a young man will be who is in love and has lost his love; but he had the artist's soul, and could not but be moved at sight of a flowing sea and a sun declining in a cloudless sky. He sat on the sand under a grass-grown rock, forgetting Lord Ballater, and Lord Ballater's dinner hour, until a church clock somewhere inland struck a quarter past six, when he started up, climbed the cliff again, and hurried along in the direction of Ravenshoe.

It was a low white house, standing not a hundred yards from the shore, with a semicircular belt of trees behind, and wide sloping grounds in front, divided from the beach by what looked like a tiny strip of moorland covered with gorse and bracken.

It was striking a quarter to seven when Hubert entered the grounds, and was met by a tall, elderly, and courtier-like gentleman, with white mustache and imperial, in Panama hat, loose jacket, and duck trousers, whom he knew to be Lord Ballater. His lordship, whose manner was rather polished than grand, greeted his visitor with much friendliness, said a lit

tle about sculpture, and a good deal about "The Wood-Nymph," and at about seven o'clock led the way to the house. His lordship himself showed him to his room, begged him not to dress for dinner, and was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs when he came down.

"I am very glad that you will do this work for me," said Lord Ballater, when they stood in the drawing-room. "Indeed, I may tell you now that I was most anxious you should undertake it. Don't laugh at my reason, though you may think there's a trifle of sentiment in it: but when I stood before your statue at the Academy I was struck by what seemed to me an extraordinary resemblance between the features of your 'Wood-Nymph' and those of my daughter."

Hubert started; but smiled, and said, "Indeed?"

"Yes. You smile. It sounds trivial, eh? But the likeness is there, I assure you; as you will say when you have seen my daughter."

A curious sensation passed over Hubert, and his part in the conversation began to flag, though Lord Ballater endeavored to draw him out by exhibiting some wonderful little figures in bronze of wild animals, which he had discovered in the studio of an unknown artist in Vienna.

But Hubert was seized with a fit of nervousness, and could not talk. Lord Ballater consulted his watch, and said:

"Five minutes to eight. They should be home by this time. My daughter and her cousin went out boating," he added, explanatorily; "and when Mary is on the water, there is never any knowing when she will bring herself home again. Ah! here they come."

A girlish figure raced past the window, singing a snatch of a song; a man followed with an oar on his shoulder.

"And brown, brown eyes are sweeter
Than any eyes on earth,"

sang the voice, as light footsteps entered the hall and tripped up the stairs.

Hubert heard not the words, but the voice thrilled him.

"And brown, brown eyes are sweeter
Than any eyes on earth,"

sang the voice again, as the feet ran swiftly down the stairs and stopped outside the door.