luxury were all gradually realized through her husband's exertions in
his profession. But for his wife's influence, Valentine would have been
in danger of abandoning high Art and Classical Landscape altogether,
for cheap portrait-painting, cheap copying, and cheap studies of Still
Life. But Mrs. Blyth, bedridden as she was, contrived to preserve all
her old influence over the labors of the Studio, and would ask for
nothing new, and receive nothing new, in her room, except on condition
that her husband was to paint at least one picture of High Art every
year, for the sake (as she proudly said) of "asserting his intellect
and his reputation in the eyes of the public." Accordingly, Mr. Blyth's
time was pretty equally divided between the production of great
unsaleable "compositions," which were always hung near the ceiling in
the Exhibition, and of small marketable commodities, which were as
invariably hung near the floor.

Valentine's average earnings from his art, though humble enough in
amount, amply sufficed to fulfill the affectionate purpose for which,
to the last farthing, they were rigorously set aside. "Lavvie's
Drawing-Room" (this was Mr. Blyth's name for his wife's bed-room)
really looked as bright and beautiful as any royal chamber in the
universe. The rarest flowers, the prettiest gardens under glass, bowls
with gold and silver fish in them, a small aviary of birds, an Aeolian
harp to put on the window-sill in summertime, some of Valentine's best
drawings from the old masters, prettily-framed proof-impressions of
engravings done by Mrs. Blyth's father, curtains and hangings of the
tenderest color and texture, inlaid tables, and delicately-carved
book-cases, were among the different objects of refinement and beauty
which, in the course of years, Mr. Blyth's industry had enabled him to
accumulate for his wife's pleasure. No one but himself ever knew what
he had sacrificed in laboring to gain these things. The heartless