"I guessed it," replied Will, warming his hands.
"Lady Caroline is superb," went on Franks, standing before the canvas, head aside and hands in his pocket. "This is my specialty, old boy—lovely woman made yet lovelier, without loss of likeness. She'll be the fury of the next Academy.—See that something in the eyes, Warburton? Don't know how to call it. My enemies call it claptrap. But they can't do the trick, my boy, they can't do it. They'd give the end of their noses if they could."
He laughed gaily, boyishly. How well he was looking! Warburton, having glanced at him, smiled with a surly kindness.
"All your doing, you know," pursued Franks, who had caught the look and the smile. "You've made me. But for you I should have gone to the devil. I was saying so yesterday to the Crosses."
"The Crosses?"
Will had sharply turned his head, with a curious surprise.
"Don't you remember the Crosses?" said Franks, smiling with a certain embarrassment, "Rosamund's friends at Walham Green. I met them by chance not long ago, and they wanted me to go and see them. The old lady's a bore, but she can be agreeable when she likes; the girl's rather clever—does pictures for children's books, you know. She seems to be getting on better lately. But they are wretchedly poor. I was saying to them—oh, but that reminds me of something else. You haven't seen the Pomfrets lately?"
"No."
"Then you don't know that Mr. Elvan's dead?"
"No."