The picture was finished-the occupation of the model was gone and then came a strange revelation which touched the heart of the painter to the quick, and woke into fresher life the memories which time, as it will appear, had not effaced from his mind.

"You can see the picture, if you like," he said, and laid down his brush reluctantly; "there is no more to be done." And acting upon this permission the maiden stepped blushingly forth, with some natural anxiety to see her own image reflected on the canvas of the painter. But if she blushed at first, in a few moments the blood which had dyed her cheeks crimson, returned to the strong fortress of her heart; for, as the reader has doubtless guessed, it was Evelyn Rainforth, whose froward fortunes had brought her at last to the studio of the artist, as a means of earning her bread; and the background of the picture on which she gazed so stedfastly, was the oriel window of the school-room at Rainforth Hall; and at the feet of that glorified image of herself, lay Talbot, the great hound, who had sat with her to the same artist so many long years ago.

"Oh! Mr. Vane," she said, in faltering accents, "I never thought you had recognized me: forgive me; but if I had known that you had done so, I could not have sat to you-indeed I could not;" and the tears flowed fast and freely down the now pale cheeks of the agitated girl. She had placed her hand deprecatingly, as she spoke, on the painter's arm; but her tearful eyes were cast down and averted so that they did not meet his compassionate and wondering glance.

For he was guiltless of the recognition with which she charged him. The background and accessories of his picture had been painted from the faithful memory, which stereotyped things once seen for ever on his mind's eye; and the announcement now made filled him with amazement and pity.

His magnanimous nature was deeply moved. He rose and stood before her, and respectfully taking the trembling hand in his own, said, "Madam, it is to you that I shall owe my future fame. I thank you from my heart; but when," he added, with a faltering voice, "when did it come to this ?"

"Not all at once," said Evelyn, mournfully; "my mother died, and now I support him; you have forgiven him, have you not? Misfortune has overtaken him-his lot is very hard."

"And yours?" said the painter; and now his brow was stern. "What is yours? Thank God that you came to me-my obligations to you are untold, and you have crowned them all. This picture will make my fortune." (He said fortune this time: it was fame he spoke of before.) May I remain indebted to you for a few more weeks? I shall then be frce-I shall then be rich-I shall then be able to ease

my conscience of some part of the great debt I owe you; the whole can

never be repaid."

She saw through the delicacy that seemed to ask, while it bestowed, a favour; and she said, with a smile and a blush

"Very well, Mr. Vane; when that time comes you shall give me your sixpence, and I will not run away."

"But the paint-box? What can I give you to repay you for that stepping-stone to art? without which, I may have blundered on, colour starved for ever more."

"Your friendship, if you will," was the reply. "I have few friends now; and he, my father I mean, has none."

The picture was accepted, and obtained the place due to its wonderful merit for the magnates of art were not blind or deaf; and the clamorous praises of the majority carried the day against a barrier of private and personal pique, which the popular voice at length conspired to crush.

"If that picture is not well hung, I will hang it with my own hands in the place of mine," said an old and large-hearted painter, who saw with disgust any efforts of petty malice to crush true genius, although anything short of that found no mercy at his hands; and the picture was well hung. And the picture attracted thousands and tens of thousands, and was crowded from early morning till night. And purchasers offered themselves and were refused; and royalty expressed unfeigned admiration, and paused long and often before "The Painter's Glory"-before that type of beautiful womanhood, into which the artist had thrown his very soul. And the painter himself had a long audience with the illustrious patron of art, who loved it for itself, and in whose stately presence the artist was ever at home; and after that audience, the rumour, that the picture had been purchased by the Queen, died a natural death; and at the close of the season it returned to the painter's studio.

But his other pictures-and there had been scores-hundreds would not be beyond the mark-packed against the walls of every room in the house-these pictures sold now for fabulous prices. Fortune and Fame, twin sisters, came hand in hand to the painter's home; as he had predicted, they followed closely in the wake of the picture he had honestly named "The Painter's Glory." There it ever shone upon him with a serene and tranquil light, urging him to fresh exertion, bidding him live up to its own standard of perfection; bidding him strive, bidding him hope, bidding him triumph; for the heart of Evelyn Rainforth was his own for evermore.

Secure in that sweet possession, the painter toiled; and not in vain. Poverty fled from his door; wealth and honour attended his steps; but the simple nature of Francis Vane remained as unspoiled by prosperity

as it had been unsoured in the days of the darkest distress. He was thoroughly domestic in all his tastes; and, with his lovely wife at his side, and his children round his knee, were passed the hours of rest and relaxation which he was now able to afford himself.

One bright winter's morning the painter and his family were assembled in a room where comfort and luxury went hand in hand; his mother was there, also-an honoured guest.

Art's foster-mother was not forgotten, in those days, when Art was triumphant. Her husband was dead; but he had lived to see his son on the pinnacle of his fame, and to acknowledge that, even in a practical point of view, he had chosen wisely for himself. The ex-gardener learned to listen with pride to the praise of those pictures, of which he himself came at last to have a hazy kind of appreciation.

"If it had been only something more useful," however, came naturally at the end, a breath to blow away the praise wrung from him. "If it had been only something more useful, Mary, I should have thought him a greater man."

The painter's home circle, I repeat, were assembled together in the breakfast-room on a bright happy morning, the morning of an auspicious day-a double birthday. The master and mistress of that happy household had been born, as the reader may remember, on the same day, and the jealousy of the lady at the Hall had been excited by the fact of our hero's appearance on the stage of life. It was forty years ago that very day, and circumstance and coincidence had effected strange changes and juxta-positions among the different members of the families at the Hall and the lodge. Ruin had depressed the fate of one, and talent had raised the balance in favour of the other, and the positions of each had been totally and completely reversed. But fate was working in a circle after all, as regarded the painter's first patroness, the little heiress who, on that her fortieth birthday, was again mistress of her ancient patrimony, Rainforth Hall.

It had been long in the market, for the title-deeds were not forthcoming, and would-be purchasers declined the risk. A month or two ago it had been purchased by Sir Francis Vane, the celebrated artist, who was born on the estate, and had married its natural heiress. Thus the home of her youth was restored to the painter's wife, Evelyn Vane, who received the intelligence with the tears of joy and pride which a wife only can shed.

"Dear, dear Rainforth," she said; "to think of living there with you and my children! It is too much-indeed it is too much." And the gentle woman, the glory of the painter's prime, and the pride of his mature age, flung herself upon the breast so single in purpose and so faithful in its strength, that was indeed her all in all.

And thus it came to pass, that, being in the neighbourhood of the

ANOTHER EVELYN AND ANOTHER TALBOT.

135

ancient and time-honoured Hall, we made a party to visit a place of such great interest to all lovers of romance, and admirers of true genius and faithful love.

The lodge and the lodge-gate, now kept by a happy young couple, with whom poverty and dependence have nothing to do, awoke all our curiosity as the birthplace of the present master of the hall. There we saw the painted glass at which in infancy he gazed with loving eyes, bathing them in their rainbow hues, that they may hereafter revel in the glory of colour, and know the secrets which she only imparts to the few. As we drove up the avenue, the sweet and fairy-like figure of Evelyn Rainforth, as she appeared when she first inspired the genius of the boy-worshipper, presented itself to the mind's eye; and the ancient hound in the court-yard supplied the link of reality which knits the present to the past, for we saw in him the grandson of the very Talbot who sat to Sir Francis Vane in the first picture which he painted to order. As we noticed the stately beast, who welcomed us with a majestic gravity peculiar to his race, the youngest and fairest of our party knelt down on the pavement, in the wildness of her enthusiasm, and flung her arms round the animal's neck, which led to an anxious scream from a doating mother, and an eager inquiry whether such a proceeding was quite safe on the part of the favourite child.

"Bless your heart, ma'am," said the coachman, who sauntered up to the party, with the idle air to be observed in the domestics of a family away from home, "he's safer than a Christian, that dog is; it was but the other day that Sir Francis painted him with little Miss Eva's arms round his neck, just as the young lady had hers then."

"Oh, may we see it? Can we see it?" cried all the young voices of the party, as a matter of course; but at the appearance of a majestic housekeeper we all became silent as the grave. On further acquaintance, however, we found that she was not so formidable as these representatives of family honours generally are, but a motherly old woman, who was proud of her master and mistress, as well she might be; but who did not expect you to become the unwilling receptacle of a mass of dry information respecting "Sir Rupert who was killed in the holy wars," or “Sir Richard, who was Lord Chancellor of England in the time of Henry VI." She actually allowed us to make straight for the picture which we wished to see, and to leave us to ourselves while we contemplated it almost in silence.

It was very well for us that Sir Francis and his lady were away from home. We could enjoy without restraint the dream-like beauty of that masterpiece. We could gaze and gaze to our heart's content, and withdraw our eyes a little and return refreshed to gaze again. It is a wonderful picture. Truth and tenderness have joined hands over its creation. Love has held the torch, and Imagination stood at the

right hand of the painter, while every touch under such influences has learnt to penetrate the secrets of the soul, and make it a loving disciple in the temple of the most exalted art.

And thus the first humbly-born owner of the Hall has shed a lustre and a glory over its name, and a halo of poetry over the beauty of its heiress, which its more highly-descended possessors had failed to do. The little babe who was born at the lodge on that bleak winter's day, was born with an immortal heritage, and he did not squander it away. With a strong right hand he carved his way to a position which the most imaginative affection could never have predicted for him. His ancestral halls were the halls of art; his patent of nobility a pure and elevated mind; his heritage the heritage of fame; his fortune the work of his own hands, to which God gave their cunning; and his "glory" the embodied type of beautiful nature-of love, of life, of hope, of peace, and of holiness, of which his faithful pencil has given both the image and the ideal. It was a useful as well as an ennobling lesson that we learnt, as we stood silently contemplating that noble picture, and felt how true was the inspiration that christened it, "The Painter's Glory."