conducted me into another apartment in order that I might see the
very latest viceregal group--a domestic one, including the Staff.
The walls of the room contained what is usually there, the enlarged
photograph, the coloured photograph, the amateur theatrical group,
the group of His Excellency's Executive Council, the native
dignitary with a diamond-tipped aigrette in the front of his turban.
The copy in oils of some old Italian landscape, very black and
yellow, also held its invariable place, and above it, very near the
ceiling, a line of canvases which, had I not been led past them to
inspect our ruler and his family, who sat transfixed on an easel in
a resplendent frame, would probably have escaped my attention. I
did proper homage to the easel, and then turned to those pictures.
It was plain enough who had painted them. Armour's broad brush
stood out all over them. They were mostly Indian sporting subjects,
the incident a trifle elliptical, the drawing unequal, but the verve
and feeling unmistakeable, and colour to send a quiver of glorious
acquiescence through you like a pang. What astonished me was the
number of them; there must have been at least a dozen, all the same
size and shape, all hanging in a line of dazzling repetition. Here
then was the explanation of Armour's seeming curious lack of output,
and plain denial of the supposition that he spent the whole of his
time in doing the little wooden 'pochade' things whose sweetness and
delicacy had so feasted our eyes elsewhere. It was part, no doubt,
of his absolutely uncommercial nature--we had experienced together
passages of the keenest embarrassment over my purchase of some of
his studies--that he had not mentioned these more serious things
exposed at Kauffer's; one had the feeling of coming unexpectedly on
treasure left upon the wayside and forgotten.

'Hullo!' I said, at a standstill, 'I see you've got some of Mr.