faithfully transmitted. Peters' voice startled her. "You are looking
at the first Barry Craven, Miss Locke. It is a wonderful picture.
The resemblance is extraordinary, is it not?"

She looked up and met the agent's magnetic smile across the table.

"It is--extraordinary," she said slowly; "it might be a costume
portrait of Mr. Craven, except that in treatment the picture is so
different from a modern painting."

Peters laughed.

"The professional eye, Miss Locke! But I am glad that you admit
the likeness. I should have quarrelled horribly with you if you
had failed to see it. The young man in the picture," he went on,
warming to the subject as he saw the girl's interest, "was one of
the most romantic personages of his time. He lived in the reign of
Elizabeth and was poet, sculptor, and musician--there are two
volumes of his verse in the library and the marble Hermes in the
hall is his work. When he was seventeen he left the Towers to go
to court. He seems to have been universally beloved, judging from
various letters that have come down to us. He was a close friend
of Sir Philip Sidney and one of Spenser's numerous patrons. A
special favourite with Elizabeth--in fact her partiality seems to
have been a source of some embarrassment, according to entries in
his private journal. She knighted him for no particular reason
that has ever transpired, indeed it seems to have been a matter of
surprise to himself, for he records it in his journal thus:

"'--dubbed knight this day by Gloriana. God He knoweth why,