He thought him a most delicate, generous, high-toned old gentleman, with a very handsome head, of the ascetic type, which he promised himself the profit of sketching.

Felix was far from having made a secret of the fact that he wielded the paint-brush, and it was not his own fault if it failed to be generally understood that he was prepared to execute the most striking likenesses on the most reasonable terms.

"He is an artist--my cousin is an artist," said Gertrude; and she offered this information to every one who would receive it.

She offered it to herself, as it were, by way of admonition and reminder; she repeated to herself at odd moments, in lonely places, that Felix was invested with this sacred character.
Gertrude had never seen an artist before; she had only read about such people.

They seemed to her a romantic and mysterious class, whose life was made up of those agreeable accidents that never happened to other persons.