And her eyes would flash, and her sensitive mouth would quiver as
the vision of fame like a mystical rainbow circled the heaven of
her youthful imagination--while Miss Leigh would sigh, and listen
and wonder,--she, whose simple hope and faith had been centred in
a love which had proved false and vain,--praying that the girl
might realise her ambition without the wreckage and disillusion of
her life.

One evening--an evening destined to mark a turning-point in
Innocent's destiny--they went together to an "At Home" held at a
beautiful studio in the house of an artist deservedly famous. Miss
Leigh had a great taste for pictures, no doubt fostered since the
early days of her romantic attachment to a man who had painted
them,--and she knew most of the artists whose names were more or
less celebrated in the modern world. Her host on this special
occasion was what is called a "fashionable" portrait painter,--
from the Queen downwards he had painted the "counterfeit
presentments" of ladies of wealth and title, flattering them as
delicately as his really clever brush would allow, and thereby
securing golden opinions as well as golden guineas. He was a
genial, breezy sort of man,--quite without vanity or any sort of
"art" ostentation, and he had been a friend of Miss Leigh's for
many years. Innocent loved going to his studio whenever her
"godmother" would take her, and he, in his turn, found interest
and amusement in talking to a girl who showed such a fresh, simple
and unworldly nature, united to intelligence and perception far
beyond her years. On the particular evening in question the studio
was full of notable people,--not uncomfortably crowded, but
sufficiently so as to compose a brilliant effect of colour and