'Take care!' said Cuningham, laughing. 'You don't know what I may have
been up to this summer.'

Findon shrugged his shoulders. 'I know a wise man when I see him. But
the fools there are about! Well, I take a strong line'--he waved his
hand, with a kind of laughing pomposity, rolling his words--'whenever
I see a young fellow marrying before he has got his training--before
he has seen a foreign gallery--before he can be sure of a year's
income ahead--above all, before he knows anything at all about
_women_, and the different ways in which they can play the devil with
you!--well, I give him up--I don't go to see his pictures--I don't
bother about him any more. The man's an ass--must be an ass!--let him
bray his bray! Why, you remember Perry?--Marindin?'

On which there followed a rattling catalogue of matrimonial failures
in the artist world, amusing enough--perhaps a little cruel. Cuningham
laughed. Watson, on whom Lord Findon's whole personality seemed to
have an effect more irritating than agreeable, fidgeted with his
brushes. He struck in presently with the dry remark that artists were
not the only persons who made imprudent marriages.

Lord Findon sprang up at once, and changed the subject. His youngest
son, the year before, had married the nurse who had pulled him through
typhoid--and was still in exile, and unforgiven.

Meanwhile no one had noticed John Fenwick. He stood behind the other
two while Lord Findon was talking--frowning sometimes and restless--a
movement now and then in lips and body, as though he were about to
speak--yet not speaking. It was one of those moments when a man feels