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 dour and beauty. I am not even of this province; although, on my father's side, we are related, many centuries ago, to the de la Mothe Fénelons.'

'Now I'm very sorry for that,' Graham smiled at the old lady, and Jill, looking at them both, felt again a sense of pity; 'for I thought that you belonged to that mountain-path with the vineyards beneath you and the menacing sky above.—Do you remember that you found my landscape menacing?—Nothing in Normandy is menacing; and that's what goes with your type, I assure you. I'd have liked to paint you there; or, if not there, then in this room, with the parrot in his cage beside you and your black lace mantilla. But if you disown it all like this, it leaves me without my picture.'

Jill felt sorrier than ever for Madame de Lamouderie as her great eyes endeavoured, almost tragically, to follow the significance of words so unexpected to her.

'Dick is only joking,' she assured her. 'He'd like to paint you anywhere.' And Jill spoke with conviction, for even she could see that the old lady was like a Goya.

'It's quite true!' Graham laughed. 'Though I'm not a portrait painter.'

Madame de Lamouderie looked from one to the other. As deeply as she had been disconcerted by the cruel suggestion that she had herself destroyed a possibility so marvellous, so was she now deeply relieved. She looked at Jill with gratitude and she smiled at Graham her half-provocative and half-supplicating