Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/592

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596
THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

£200 as the price of the picture? the balance to be paid on delivery in London. Now think no more of the rest, and remain well assured that if ever this little episode gets abroad in the world it will not be through the instrumentality of—Yours very sincerely,

"Richard Lavers."


"He flung them back."


Sir Richard has settled down now as a respectable county member; and, except when occasionally exhilarated with champagne, is really a most useful pillar of society. He's very proud of a picture in his dining-room of Sorrento from the Castellammare-road—a companion-piece to that exquisite autumnal view of the ruin on the Drachenfels and the Seven Mountains. Both are from the brush of that rising young Associate, Mr. Guy Lethbridge, whom Sir Richard discovered and introduced to the great world; but the frame of the Sorrento bears a neat little inscription: "For Sir Richard Lavers, from his ever grateful and affectionate friend, the painter." The owner has been offered five hundred down for the Drachenfels more than once—and has refused the offer.