"You surprise me. However, Melville had three pictures there,--all
very good; but the one I wished to buy made much more sensation than
the others, and has suddenly lifted him from obscurity into fame."

"He appears to be a relation of Miss Mordaunt's, but so distant a one
that she could not even tell me what grade of cousinship he could
claim."

"Nor can I. He is her guardian, I know. The relationship, if any,
must, as you say, be very distant; for Melville is of humble
extraction, while any one can see that Mrs. Cameron is a thorough
gentlewoman, and Lily Mordaunt is her sister's child. I have heard my
mother say that it was Melville, then a very young man, who bought the
cottage, perhaps with Mrs. Cameron's money; saying it was for a
widowed lady, whose husband had left her with very small means. And
when Mrs. Cameron arrived with Lily, then a mere infant, she was in
deep mourning, and a very young woman herself,--pretty too. If
Melville had been a frequent visitor then, of course there would have
been scandal; but he very seldom came, and when he did, he lodged in a
cottage, Cromwell Lodge, on the other side of the brook; now and then
bringing with him a fellow-lodger,--some other young artist, I
suppose, for the sake of angling. So there could be no cause for
scandal, and nothing can be more blameless than poor Mrs. Cameron's
life. My mother, who then resided at Braefieldville, took a great
fancy to both Lily and her aunt, and when by degrees the cottage grew
into a genteel sort of place, the few gentry in the neighbourhood
followed my mother's example and were very kind to Mrs. Cameron, so
that she has now her place in the society about here, and is much
liked."