A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

"A slight service, do you call it? It seemed to me a very great service at the time. I missed you in the confusion at the terminus, so that my aunt was not able to thank you, as she would very much like to have done."

"I certainly can't see that any thanks were needed. But, putting that aside, I am very pleased to have met you again." And as he said this there was a fire and earnestness in his eyes that in its turn brought a vivid blush to the young lady's cheeks. "I came here at the request of Sir Percy Jones," he added, "to see Miss Collumpton respecting a portrait. I never expected to have the pleasure of finding you under the same roof."

"I have been living here for some time," she said. Then to herself she added, "I wonder whom he takes me for--a nursery governess or a companion, or what?"

"I hope Miss Collumpton is not a very exacting young lady. If she is, I am afraid that I shall scarcely be able to please her. I have painted very few portraits as yet, but Sir Percy was so pleased with the one I did of him that he declared he must have one of his god-daughter to take with him when he goes abroad."

"I don't think that you will find Miss Collumpton very exacting."

"I am glad to hear that. I wish it was your portrait I was going to paint instead of hers."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask, "Why do you wish that?" but, happening to glance at his face, she saw the same look in his eyes that had troubled her before. She dropped her lids and looked another way. There was a moment's awkward silence. Then she said, "I think I had better go and fetch Miss Collumpton. She promised to follow me at once;" and with that she got out of the room.

Left alone, Clem went back at once to his examination of the prints and sketches on the walls. But he saw them without seeing them, and could remember nothing of them afterwards. He had caught Love's fever, and the symptoms were declaring themselves already. He was standing before a little sketch by Stanfield and smiling fatuously, as though there was something comical about it, which there certainly was not. When the patient takes to smiling in this purposeless way it is looked upon by those learned in such matters as a very bad sign.

About a week previously, as he was coming up to town, a young lady--the young lady who had just left the room--got into the same carriage, a second-class one, at Tring, in which he was already seated. He was not aware that she had been driven to take refuge in the second-class on account of the first-class seats being all occupied. They were presently joined by a cad of a fellow, who was evidently half-drunk, and just as evidently determined to talk to the pretty girl on the opposite seat, whether she liked it or not. At length the annoyance reached such a pitch, and the lady became so plainly distressed, that Clem, whose blood had been simmering for some time, felt called upon to interfere. Thereupon the cad turned on our friend like a young bear, and growled out something about wise people minding their own business, adding a certain epithet which had better have been left unspoken. The result was that before he knew what had happened he found himself lying in a heap in a corner of the carriage, with a discolored eye and a bruised nose, and a feeling as if a fifth of November cracker had exploded in his head. The train was slackening speed at the time, and as soon as it stopped the wounded knight scrambled out of the carriage, holding his handkerchief to his nose and muttering something about fetching the police. But he was seen no more. The rest of the journey came to an end far too soon for Clem. When he alighted at Euston the young lady was at once taken possession of by an elderly lady, while Clem rushed off in search of his portmanteau. But Clem had not forgotten the sweet face of his travelling companion. Being an artist, what more natural than that he should attempt to sketch it from memory as soon as he reached home, and not once but twenty times.

"What do you mean by neglecting your Academy picture in this way?" Tony Macer had fiercely demanded three days later. "And what do you mean, sir, by drawing the same simpering face from morn till dewy eve, and grinning to yourself all the time like a jackass in a fit? You've not been idiot enough to go and fall in love, have you? By Apelles! if I thought you had, I would take you vi et armis, and hold you under the back-kitchen tap for half an hour, and see whether that wouldn't cool your foolish brain!"