The landlady of No. 23 received Leslie and her father as if they were old friends instead of transient lodgers, and she expressed her concern at the appearance of Mr. Lisle.
"He don't look well, Miss Lisle," she said in a stage whisper, as they went in with their baggage. "Been in the country, too! Ah, I often says there's no place like London for health. And you, too, begging your pardon, miss, don't look too rosy. What you want is brightening up, and there's no place like London for brightening up, that I will say."
Leslie smiled sadly. She knew that she looked pale and wan, but it hurt her to hear that her father was not looking well.
She got him to bed early, but directly after breakfast he was all anxiety to go down to the picture dealer who had brought him to town.
"Can I not go alone, dear, while you rest?" she said. But he scouted the suggestion.
"No, no, I will go. Women are all very well, but a man is needed for business of this kind. Get some of the best of my pictures together, and we will go in a cab."
Leslie got ready, and all the time she was putting on her outdoor things she thought of the arrangement with Yorke. She was to have sent him her address to the Dorchester Club. He was waiting for it now, expecting it every minute. She could imagine his impatience, could picture to herself how he would walk up and down fuming for the telegram.
With a heavy heart she tied up the least ridiculous of her father's pictures and sent out for a cab, and told the man to drive to Bond Street, to the picture dealer's.
A hectic flush burned in Francis Lisle's thin cheeks, and Leslie saw his lips move as if he were speaking to himself, telling himself that Fame and Prosperity were awaiting him. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! If she had not consented to deceive her father she would not now be in this awful strait; she was actually leading him to the bitterest disappointment of his life.
There are picture dealers and picture dealers. Mr. Arnheim, of Bond Street, is one of the best known men and the most respected. Many an artist now famous and wealthy owes his first step up the ladder to Mr. Arnheim. He will buy anything that shows promise, and for great works will give as much and more than a private purchaser. His judgment is almost infallible, and to be spoken well of by Arnheim is to have a passport to artistic fame. The cab drew up at his house, which was near the corner in one of the turnings out of Bond Street, and had nothing about it to indicate the nature of his business save and excepting a very small brass plate with "H. Arnheim" on it.