ignoring Lady Caroline's commentary as far as possible, "all the
expression seems to have been deliberately concentrated in the
feet; beautiful feet, no doubt, but still, hardly the most
distinctive part of a human being."

"To paint the right people at the wrong end may be an eccentricity,
but it is scarcely an indiscretion," pronounced Lady Caroline.

One of the portraits which attracted more than a passing flutter of
attention was a costume study of Francesca Bassington. Francesca
had secured some highly desirable patronage for the young artist,
and in return he had enriched her pantheon of personal possessions
with a clever piece of work into which he had thrown an unusual
amount of imaginative detail. He had painted her in a costume of
the great Louis's brightest period, seated in front of a tapestry
that was so prominent in the composition that it could scarcely be
said to form part of the background. Flowers and fruit, in exotic
profusion, were its dominant note; quinces, pomegranates, passion-
flowers, giant convolvulus, great mauve-pink roses, and grapes that
were already being pressed by gleeful cupids in a riotous Arcadian
vintage, stood out on its woven texture. The same note was struck
in the beflowered satin of the lady's kirtle, and in the
pomegranate pattern of the brocade that draped the couch on which
she was seated. The artist had called his picture "Recolte." And
after one had taken in all the details of fruit and flower and
foliage that earned the composition its name, one noted the
landscape that showed through a broad casement in the left-hand
corner. It was a landscape clutched in the grip of winter, naked,
bleak, black-frozen; a winter in which things died and knew no
rewakening. If the picture typified harvest, it was a harvest of