one must always give a silly up-to-date title to pictures, and just
now one nondescript word is the fashion, unless you feel it needful
to attract to yourself the eye of the public, in the catalogue, by
calling your picture twenty lines of Tennyson. But when the portrait
goes down to posterity as a famous picture, it will figure in the
catalogue of the National Gallery as 'The Duchess, the Mirror, and
the Macaw.'"

"Bravo!" said the duchess, delighted. "You shall paint it, Dal, in
time for next year's Academy, and we will all go and see it."

And he did. And they all went. And when they saw it they said: "Ah,
of course! There it is; just as we saw it under the cedar at
Overdene."

"Here comes Simmons with something on a salver," exclaimed the
duchess. "How that man waddles! Why can't somebody teach him to step
out? Jane! You march across this lawn like a grenadier. Can't you
explain to Simmons how it's done? . . . Well? What is it? Ha! A
telegram. Now what horrible thing can have happened? Who would like
to guess? I hope it is not merely some idiot who has missed a
train."

Amid a breathless and highly satisfactory silence, the duchess tore
open the orange envelope.

Apparently the shock was of a thorough, though not enjoyable, kind;
for the duchess, at all times highly coloured, became purple as she
read, and absolutely inarticulate with indignation. Jane rose
quietly, looked over her aunt's shoulder, read the long message, and