The carriage, which was called Mrs. Wroat’s carriage, was a job vehicle, hired by the month at a neighboring mews, with horses, and with coachman and footman in livery. It looked like a private brougham, and with its mulberry-colored linings, and plain but elegantly gotten-up harness, was very stylish, and even imposing.
When the carriage came around, Lally and her attendant were quite ready. They descended to the vehicle, and drove away upon their shopping excursion. A fur dealer’s was first visited, then a stationer’s and bookseller’s, then a shop for ladies’ work and their materials. Lally’s purchases were deposited in the carriage. And lastly the young girl stopped at a picture dealer’s in Regent street, a small cabinet painting in the window having caught her eye.
It was simply a quaint Dutch interior, with a broad hearth, a boiling pot over the flames, a great tiled chimney-piece, a Dutch house-wife with ample figure and round, good-natured face, and three or four children pausing at the threshold of the open door to put off their shoes before stepping upon the immaculate floor; a simple picture, executed with fidelity and spirit; but its charm, in Lally’s eyes, lay in the fact that in the early days of her marriage, during the brief period she had passed with Rufus Black in New Brompton, in their dingy lodgings, he had painted a cabinet picture of a Dutch interior, nearly like this in design, but as different in execution as may be imagined. His had been but a daub, and he had been glad to get fifteen shillings for it. The price of this picture which had now caught Lally’s eye was ten guineas.
The young lady had the picture withdrawn from the window and examined it closely.
“I will take it,” she said. “I will select a suitable frame, and you may send it home to-day. Here is my card.”
The picture dealer brought an armful of frames for her selection, and while she examined the designs and gilding, a man walked into the shop with a sauntering gait, and paused near her, in contemplation of an old cracked painting to which was attached a card declaring it to be a genuine Murillo.
“This is no more a Murillo than I’m one!” announced the new-comer loudly, half turning his face toward the shopman. “A Murillo? It’s a modern daub, gotten up to sell.”
At the sound of the stranger’s voice Lally started, dropping the frame she held in her hand. She turned around quickly, looking at him with dilating eyes and whitening face, and gasping breath.
The strange connoisseur, who had so boldly given his opinion of the pretended Murillo, was Rufus Black!
He had tired of the loneliness of Hawkhurst, and had run up to town for a day’s recreation and amusement. The picture shop in Regent street, into which Lally had strayed that morning, had long been one of his favorite haunts, and the picture Lally had just bought had really given him the idea of the picture he had painted so long before in the dingy room at New Brompton.