was open-hearted but close-fisted, to give anything else. But the boy
contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as
arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor
may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy
shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he
painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten
shillings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would give L100 apiece
for them."

"That is the true soul in which genius lodges, and out of which fire
springs," cried Darrell cordially. "Give me the fire that lurks in the
flint, and answers by light the stroke of the hard steel. I'm glad
Lionel has won a friend in such a man. Sidney Branthwaite's son married
Vance's sister--after Vance had won reputation?"

"No; while Vance was still a boy. Young Arthur Branthwaite was an
orphan. If he had any living relations, they were too poor to assist
him. He wrote poetry much praised by the critics (they deserve to be
hanged, those critics!)--scribbled, I suppose, in old Vance's journal;
saw Mary Vance a little before her father died; fell in love with her;
and on the strength of a volume of verse, in which the critics all
solemnly deposed to his surpassing riches--of imagination, rushed to the
altar, and sacrificed a wife to the Muses! Those villanous critics will
have a dark account to render in the next world! Poor Arthur
Branthwaite! For the sake of our old friend, his father, I bought a copy
of his little volume. Little as the volume was, I could not read it
through."

What!--below contempt?"