Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/460



T is your turn next," said Denis O'Hara, turning to a grey-bearded, middle-aged man, who was smoking his brierwood with serene and placid content; "and this," handing him a sketch from the heap on the table, "this is your subject."

The artist took it, and for some moments gazed quietly down at the subject it presented.

Only a girl, perched in a half-defiant, half-coquettish attitude on a wooden table, a cigarette in her hand, just as if taken from the pretty, petulant lips, which blew a cloud of smoke into the laughing face of a young man bending over her.

"It looks more French than English," said Denis, musingly; "and the name—Cigarette, isn't that it, Druce?"

"That is the name," said Norman Druce. A smile, humorous and tender, played round his mouth, as he took out the big pipe and quietly filled it. "Yes," he said again, as he resumed his seat, "there is something un-English and unconventional about that sketch, but for all that the girl was English; and, stranger still, the daughter of a country clergyman."

"That," said Jasper Trenoweth, some-