window, and, the 'Red Duchess' being one of the half-dozen
superlative portraits of the world, I was naturally interested. It
was certainly a fine copy, and I was pleased to get it so cheaply.

"Now there were two or three circumstances connected with my find
that afterwards struck me as peculiar. In the first place it is
well known that permission to copy any of the pictures at the
Hermitage Gallery is very rarely given, and the authorities are
particularly averse to having reproductions made of the Lely
portrait. Secondly, why were the edges of the canvas so curiously
serrated, giving the picture the look of having been hastily cut
away from its frame? And, finally, where and when had this copy
been made? for the label of the Fulton Street art dealer on the
back bore the date 1903, and this was the 2d of February in the
same year. Obviously impossible that the artist could have gone to
Russia, painted the picture, and returned with it to New York in a
little over a month.

"Two days later I was walking up Fourth Avenue, through the
district affected by the curio and old-furniture dealers, and I
discovered a replica of my 'Red Duchess' hanging in a shop-window.
In every respect identical, you understand, the two pictures were
unquestionably the work of the same hand. Whose hand?

"Do you remember, Thorp, the name of Clive Richmond? Well, for a
year or two he was the favorite painter of women's portraits here
in New York, hailed as genius and all that. Then suddenly his work
began to fall off in quality; his failures became egregious, and
his clients left him. Shortly after he disappeared; it was the
common report that his misfortunes had affected his reason; there