wife--Mrs. Oke--had seen some of my--pictures--paintings--portraits--at
the--the--what d'you call it?--Academy. She had--in short, they had made a
very great impression upon her. Mrs. Oke had a great taste for art; she
was, in short, extremely desirous of having her portrait and his painted by
me, _etcetera_.

"My wife," he suddenly added, "is a remarkable woman. I don't know whether
you will think her handsome,--she isn't exactly, you know. But she's
awfully strange," and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little sigh and frowned
that curious frown, as if so long a speech and so decided an expression of
opinion had cost him a great deal.

It was a rather unfortunate moment in my career. A very influential sitter
of mine--you remember the fat lady with the crimson curtain behind
her?--had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had painted her
old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique had turned
against me, the newspapers had taken up the matter, and for the moment I
was considered as a painter to whose brushes no woman would trust her
reputation. Things were going badly. So I snapped but too gladly at Mr.
Oke's offer, and settled to go down to Okehurst at the end of a fortnight.
But the door had scarcely closed upon my future sitter when I began to
regret my rashness; and my disgust at the thought of wasting a whole summer
upon the portrait of a totally uninteresting Kentish squire, and his
doubtless equally uninteresting wife, grew greater and greater as the time
for execution approached. I remember so well the frightful temper in which
I got into the train for Kent, and the even more frightful temper in which
I got out of it at the little station nearest to Okehurst. It was pouring
floods. I felt a comfortable fury at the thought that my canvases would get
nicely wetted before Mr. Oke's coachman had packed them on the top of the
waggonette. It was just what served me right for coming to this confounded