'I don't know about that, I'm sure, but I don't want it finished at all.

Oh, I see. I have heard something of your intention to leave Wallington Bay, but instead of telling me of it in a straightforward manner, and asking to be off your bargain, you wish to find an excuse for dissatisfaction with my work.'

The speech was certainly far from conciliatory, but there was one thing in it which mitigated its severity to the person addressed. Mrs. Jennynge was relieved to find that Mr. Felspar attributed her change of views to her proposed departure from the hotel-an intention which, as we know, she had abandoned.

'Well,' said she naïvely, and without an attempt to resent his imputation, it seems hard to pay for a thing we don't want, doesn't it?'

'I might retort, madam,' answered Felspar, his words falling slowly and coldly, like the droppings from an icicle, that it seems also hard to have had to do work for nothing. But I am not in the habit of bargaining about my pictures. The law would award me the full

amount agreed upon, since I am ready to fulfil my part of our contract; but I am content to waive my rights.'

'And to charge me nothing?' exclaimed Mrs. Jennynge, in a tone less of gratitude than of expectancy.

'Nothing.'

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'Now I call that handsome,' said Mrs. Jennynge admiringly; very handsome. I have often heard of the generosity of Art, and so on, but I never believed it. Mr. Felspar, you are a gentleman.'

Mr. Felspar looked at her with an inquiring glance, as though he would have said, 'How should you know?' but the implied sarcasm flew over her head; she only felt that she had made an excellent bargain.

6

I am sure, my dear sir,' she continued effusively, we part the best of friends. Any further lessons, by-the-by, you may be good enough to give my daughter must be no longer given as a friend. I must insist upon your being remunerated for them.'

But I thought you were going away?'

said Mr. Felspar.

To be sure, I forgot that,' said Mrs. Jennynge, for the first time looking really abashed. 'Our departure, however, is not quite certain.'

Mr. Felspar, to intimate that there were no doubts on that point in his own case, took up his hat. He was about to leave her, with a distant bow, when she stopped him.

'I again repeat you have behaved most nobly, Mr. Felspar; but about the cheque?', • What cheque?'

'Well, the fifty pounds. I mean, of course, the first fifty. You will send it back to me, I conclude, in the course of the day. We may be leaving the hotel, and at all events, as my poor husband used to say, "short settlements make long friends."

'I wish your husband was alive, madam, and acting towards me as you have done. Then I could tell him what I thought of his behaviour. As you are a lady that is unfortunately impossible.'

'Do you mean to say you are going to keep that first fifty, after all?'

'Most decidedly I am. If I was as rich as you, and you were as poor as I, I should doubtless return it to you as a free gift, but, as it is, I should as soon think of making over to you my last year's income. Good morning, madam.'

'I don't think much of artists,' murmured Mrs. Jennynge when he had left the room. •However, I have got half the money back, which was more than was to be expected.' Then she took the picture off the easel and placed it on the floor with its back to the wall. The model of her lost Nathaniel after death had been already stowed away out of sight, and now she collected his photographs and put them without much ceremony into the tabledrawer. Having thus cleared the apartment of all the touching mementoes of the departed, she returned with a sigh of relief to the construction of the blush rose which she intended for the Hon. George Emilius Josceline.

CHAPTER XXV.

IN QUARANTINE.

THE sharp contrasts of which the world is full are sharpest, not between rich and poor, I think (though, Heaven knows, those are clearly defined enough), but between the hale and the sick. It is true that riches may be the lot of the healthy, and sickness that of the poor, in which case the question of compensation becomes (to the unphilosophic mind) importunate indeed; but there is no need for our present purpose to come face to face with that. was difference enough between the mode of life pursued by the tenants of the Ultramarine in general, and that of that portion of them cut off from the rest by the double doors which divided it from the Prior's House or Hostel. In the one case there was Mr. Josceline wooing and winning; Mrs. Jennynge, in an Indian

There