content to spend weeks at Chillingsworth with no other companion. But,
on the whole, he was rather a lonely man.

It occurred to him how lonely he was one gay June morning when the
sunlight was streaming through his narrow windows, illuminating
tapestries and armor, the family portraits of the young profligate from
whom he had made this splendid purchase, dusting its gold on the black
wood of wainscot and floor. He was in the gallery at the moment,
studying one of his two favorite portraits, a gallant little lad in the
green costume of Robin Hood. The boy's expression was imperious and
radiant, and he had that perfect beauty which in any disposition
appealed so powerfully to the author. But as Orth stared to-day at the
brilliant youth, of whose life he knew nothing, he suddenly became aware
of a human stirring at the foundations of his aesthetic pleasure.

"I wish he were alive and here," he thought, with a sigh. "What a jolly
little companion he would be! And this fine old mansion would make a far
more complementary setting for him than for me."

He turned away abruptly, only to find himself face to face with the
portrait of a little girl who was quite unlike the boy, yet so perfect
in her own way, and so unmistakably painted by the same hand, that he
had long since concluded they had been brother and sister. She was
angelically fair, and, young as she was--she could not have been more
than six years old--her dark-blue eyes had a beauty of mind which must
have been remarkable twenty years later. Her pouting mouth was like a
little scarlet serpent, her skin almost transparent, her pale hair fell
waving--not curled with the orthodoxy of childhood--about her tender
bare shoulders. She wore a long white frock, and clasped tightly against
her breast a doll far more gorgeously arrayed than herself. Behind her