MR. GLADSTONE
was covered with regular and small wrinkles that were only visible in certain lights. These small lines may have caused in him the effect I have been trying to explain.
While bending over the writing-table the reflected light from the white paper produced an effect, in combination with his thin white and rather straggling hair, that always inspired the most irresistible desire to sketch quickly each succeeding phase.
Work went on, in this regular routine, day after day until the portrait, a full-length but under life-size, was almost finished. But one morning Mrs. Gladstone came into the room, and she in turn seemed surprised to see me calmly working while Sir Algernon West was going over the correspondence. I rose to greet her, but she nodded and passed by me on her way to the window, where for a few moments she stood gazing out towards the Duke of York's Column. Presently she came back and, leaning over me, said, "I do not think you should be here while Sir Algernon is reading the letters: there may be things in them that you should not know." "Yes," I replied, "that is so, but Mr. Gladstone has arranged all that. I am to go out, or Mr. Gladstone will take Sir Algernon into the next room when anything I should not hear comes up." Slowly and reluctantly she appeared to accept this, but after another and longer inspection of St. James's Park from the window she began to pass nervously to and fro between Mr. Gladstone and me. Presently Mr. Gladstone raised his voice a little above the tone he was using with the secretary, and I heard him say, "My dear! do not walk between Mr. Hamilton and me. You will prevent him from seeing me." I almost shuddered to think of the effect of this admonition upon Mrs. Glad-
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