"Really! and who is it, Mr. Carlyon? How good of you to think of me!"
"You remember telling me how much you admire Maddison's work."
"Why, yes! But he is not here, surely?" she exclaimed. "It cannot be he!"
Mr. Carlyon smiled at her sudden enthusiasm. After all, this woman had fire. She was too much of the artist to be without it.
"He is not here now, but he will be. I could not believe it myself at first, for I know that he is a perfect recluse. But I have just asked Lady Meltoun, and there is no doubt about it. It seems that they came across him in a lonely part of Spain, and he saved the life of Lady Meltoun's only child—a little boy. It is quite a romantic story. He promised to come and seem them directly he returned to England, and he is expected here to-day."
"I shall like to see him very much," she said thoughtfully. "Lately I have been reading him a great deal. It is strange, but the tone of his writings seems always to remind me of some one I once knew."
"There is no one of to-day who writes such prose," the artist answered. "To me, his work seems to have reached that exquisite blending of matter and form which is the essence of all true art."
"All his ideas of culture and the inner life are so simple and yet so beautiful."
"And the language with which he clothes them is divine. His work appeals everywhere to the purest and most artistic side of our emotional natures; and it is always on the same level. It has only one fault—there is so little of it."
"Do you know him?" she asked, deeply interested.