Major was anecdotically unconscious. But Oronte gave us tea, with a
hundred eager confusions (he had never seen such a queer process),
and I think she thought better of me for having at last an
"establishment." They saw a couple of drawings that I had made of
the establishment, and Mrs. Monarch hinted that it never would have
struck her that he had sat for them. "Now the drawings you make from
US, they look exactly like us," she reminded me, smiling in triumph;
and I recognised that this was indeed just their defect. When I drew
the Monarchs I couldn't, somehow, get away from them--get into the
character I wanted to represent; and I had not the least desire my
model should be discoverable in my picture. Miss Churm never was,
and Mrs. Monarch thought I hid her, very properly, because she was
vulgar; whereas if she was lost it was only as the dead who go to
heaven are lost--in the gain of an angel the more.

By this time I had got a certain start with "Rutland Ramsay," the
first novel in the great projected series; that is I had produced a
dozen drawings, several with the help of the Major and his wife, and
I had sent them in for approval. My understanding with the
publishers, as I have already hinted, had been that I was to be left
to do my work, in this particular case, as I liked, with the whole
book committed to me; but my connection with the rest of the series
was only contingent. There were moments when, frankly, it WAS a
comfort to have the real thing under one's hand; for there were
characters in "Rutland Ramsay" that were very much like it. There
were people presumably as straight as the Major and women of as good
a fashion as Mrs. Monarch. There was a great deal of country-house
life--treated, it is true, in a fine, fanciful, ironical, generalised
way--and there was a considerable implication of knickerbockers and
kilts. There were certain things I had to settle at the outset; such