dim idea that Lord Considine was a great proprietor, and though there
mingled with it a faint impression that I shouldn't like his son the
result of the two images was a whimsical prayer that the girl mightn't
miss her possible fortune.




CHAPTER IV


One day in the course of the following June there was ushered into my
studio a gentleman whom I had not yet seen but with whom I had been very
briefly in correspondence. A letter from him had expressed to me some
days before his regret on learning that my "splendid portrait" of Miss
Flora Louisa Saunt, whose full name figured by her own wish in the
catalogue of the exhibition of the Academy, had found a purchaser before
the close of the private view. He took the liberty of inquiring whether
I might have at his service some other memorial of the same lovely head,
some preliminary sketch, some study for the picture. I had replied that
I had indeed painted Miss Saunt more than once and that if he were
interested in my work I should be happy to show him what I had done. Mr.
Geoffrey Dawling, the person thus introduced to me, stumbled into my room
with awkward movements and equivocal sounds--a long, lean, confused,
confusing young man, with a bad complexion and large protrusive teeth. He
bore in its most indelible pressure the postmark, as it were, of Oxford,
and as soon as he opened his mouth I perceived, in addition to a
remarkable revelation of gums, that the text of the queer communication
matched the registered envelope. He was full of refinements and angles,
of dreary and distinguished knowledge. Of his unconscious drollery his