Miss Winthrop had prolonged her visit in Washington until after Christmas, but she had returned to Boston now—and with her she had brought a brand-new idea for her portrait; an idea that caused her to sweep aside with superb disdain² all poses and costumes and sketches³ to date, and announce herself with disarming⁴ winsomeness⁵ as “all ready now to really begin!”

 

Bertram Henshaw was vexed⁶, but helpless. Decidedly he wished to paint Miss Marguerite Winthrop's portrait; but to attempt to paint it when all matters were not to the lady's liking⁷ were worse than useless, unless he wished to hang this portrait in the gallery of failures along with Anderson's and Fullam's—and that was not the goal he had set for it. As to the sordid⁸ money part of the affair—the great J. G. Winthrop himself had come to the artist, and in one terse⁹ sentence had doubled the original price and expressed himself as hopeful that Henshaw would put up with “the child's notions.” It was the old financier's next sentence, however, that put the zest¹⁰ of real determination into Bertram, for because of it, the artist saw what this portrait was going to mean to the stern old man, and how dear was the original of it to a heart that was commonly reported “on the street” to be made of stone.

 

Obviously, then, indeed, there was nothing for Bertram Henshaw to do but to begin the new portrait. And he began it—though still, it must be confessed, with inward questionings. Before a week had passed, however, every trace of

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