"Millings Gazette" obituary column. "You get me?"

"Yes," said Sheila, in her voice that in some mysterious way was another
expression of the clear mistiness of her eyes and the suppleness of her
body. "You are Mr. Hudson." She twisted her hands together behind her
back. She was shivering with cold and nervousness. "It's done, you see.
Father finished it."

Hudson gave the canvas an absent glance and motioned Sheila to a chair
with a stiff gesture of his arm.

"You set down," he said.

She obeyed, and he walked to and fro before her.

"Say, now," he said, "I'll take the picture all right. But I'd like to
know, Miss Arundel, if you'll excuse me, how you're fixed?"

"Fixed?" Sheila faltered.

"Why, yes, ma'am--as to finances, I mean. You've got some funds, or some
relations or some friends to call upon--?"

Sheila drew up her head a trifle, lowered her eyes, and began to plait
her thin skirt across her knee with small, delicate fingers. Hudson
stopped in his walk to watch this mechanical occupation. She struggled
dumbly with her emotion and managed to answer him at last.

"No, Mr. Hudson. Father is very poor. I haven't any relations. We have no
friends here nor anywhere near. We lived in Europe till quite lately--a