the first movement in these moonlit seances, and say that the other two
were more like morning and afternoon. Then with a sigh she would softly
shut the piano lid, and perhaps wiping a little genuine moisture from
her eyes, would turn on the electric light and taking up a book from
the table, in which a paper-knife marked the extent of her penetration,
say:

"Georgie, you must really promise me to read this life of Antonino
Caporelli the moment I have finished it. I never understood the rise of
the Venetian School before. As I read I can smell the salt tide
creeping up over the lagoon, and see the campanile of dear Torcello."

And Georgie would put down the tambour on which he was working his copy
of an Italian cope and sigh too.

"You are too wonderful!" he would say. "How do you find time for
everything?"

She rejoined with the apophthegm that made the rounds of Riseholme next
day.

"My dear, it is just busy people that have time for everything."

It might be thought that even such activities as have here been
indicated would be enough to occupy anyone so busily that he would
positively not have time for more, but such was far from being the case
with Mrs Lucas. Just as the painter Rubens amused himself with being
the ambassador to the Court of St. James--a sufficient career in itself
for most busy men--so Mrs Lucas amused herself, in the intervals of her
pursuit of Art for Art's sake, with being not only an ambassador but a