NEAR the end of a long summer day, toward the close of a London season, Mr. Heaphey was alone in his studio in London.

      It was a large apartment with alcoves, in one of which a number of portraits and pictures were hung upon the walls, with the usual bric-à-brac of an artist's reception-room.

      Coming into his reception-room from a smaller cabinet, in which he was putting away some papers, Mr. Heaphey was startled to see a lady quite unknown to him, young, of good figure and carriage, dressed quietly, in perfect taste and in the fashion, who was walking round the room and inspecting the pictures.

      Mr. Heaphey approached and saluted her, observing as he did so that, while she was unquestionably fine-looking, her countenance was unusually pale, and that her eyes, which she fixed upon him as he spoke to her, had a singular, and, as he afterwards described it, almost "uncanny," expression.

      She made no explanation whatever of her presence, but at once asked him whether he could paint immediately a portrait of her for a dear friend to whom she wished to send it as soon as possible.

      Mr. Heaphey replied that he would be happy to do so if it were in his power, but that he was on the point of leaving London for a round of visits in the country; that he had many professional engagements, which would probably occupy him during the remainder of the year; and that he could not at all see his way clear to do what she was so good as to ask him to do.

      The lady treated these objections with polite indifference, and persisted, saying that it would not be necessary for Mr. Heaphey that she should sit to him.

      "You will not forget my face," she said, with a singular intonation, "and, if I am not misinformed as to your talents, you can make a sketch of me now, from which you could paint such a portrait as I wish."

      Mr. Heaphey thanked her for her good opinion, but again excused himself.

      Nothing would do, however, and the lady finally carried her point so far that Mr. Heaphey — he could hardly say why, and certainly against his own will and judgment — consented to undertake the commission.

      "It will be necessary for me," he said, "to find some time during the autumn when I can give you your sittings, and if you will oblige me with your name and address, I will see what I can do, and will let you know."

      "That is hardly necessary," said the lady. "I will be here at any time you may appoint."

      Mr. Heaphey looked at her with astonishment.

      "But I don't see how you can be here unless I let you know when that time will be."

      "I shall have no difficulty about that," said the lady, almost petulantly. "In the meantime, I will see that you have an engraving of a face which I am told strongly resembles my own — so strongly that it has sometimes been mistaken for a portrait of me. This will serve to keep me in your mind," she said, smiling; "and, by the way, I wish you would try to make a sketch of me now."

      Puzzled by the lady's manner as much as by her words, he quietly said:

      "O, excuse me, I must get my address-book, and we will arrange matters;" and with this he turned his back for a moment to the lady, and going to a desk, opened it to take out the book of which he spoke. When he turned again with the book in his hand, to his profound astonishment the lady had vanished!

II.

      THE door of the studio was shut, as it had been during the whole interview. It was a heavy door, and closed with a strong spring lock. It seemed to Mr. Heaphey hardly possible that it could have been opened and shut unheard by him; but he instantly ran to it, opened it, and looked down the broad flight of stairs to the street, and this so rapidly that it seemed scarcely imaginable a lady could have got out of the house before he was upon the stairway.

      No trace of her, however, could be seen.

      He ran hastily down and questioned the porter, who happened to be standing near his window, which commanded a complete view of the stairway and of the entrance to the building. His amazement was heightened when he found that the porter not only protested that he had not seen any lady go out, but declared that, so far as he knew, no lady had entered the building for more than an hour before.

      The man looked at Mr. Heaphey as he told him this with a curious expression, which satisfied Mr. Heaphey that he would not improve his reputation as a sane and sober person by pressing his questions any further on the porter. He went up-stairs again, and set about the occupation in which he had been interrupted by his extraordinary visitor. It was impossible, however, for him to shake off an unusual and uncomfortable feeling for which he could not account, but which finally became so strong that he closed his desk and left the building for the night.

III.

      HIS arrangements to leave town being completed, the next morning he went back to the studio to see that everything was put in proper order for the vacation, and to give some final directions. On his desk lay, with a number of letters, a small roll of paper addressed to him by name, but bearing no mark or any sign of having passed through the post. He took this roll of paper up carelessly, opened it, and, to his unspeakable astonishment, found himself confronted with an engraved portrait of a lady bearing a most marvellous resemblance, in the form of the head, manner of wearing the hair, and the features, to his mysterious visitor of the previous evening.

      This engraving, on examination, he found had been taken out of one of the handsome annuals which had been in vogue many years before — I think from one of Heath's Books of Beauty. It was a portrait of a young lady of rank celebrated for her beauty, the daughter of an earl. Calling up, the porter, Mr. Heaphey asked him by whom this roll of paper had been left. The porter replied:

      "I have no idea. I never saw it before."

      "Did you not bring it with the other letters?"

      "No, sir."

      Now, there was no letter-slit in the door of the studio. The studio itself had been locked and the key in the porter's possession during the whole time.

      The man protested solemnly that he had only come into the room to bring up the letters, that the roll of paper was not carried up by him, and that to the best of his recollection, though upon this point he could not be positive, no such roll of paper had been on the desk when he left the letters there.

      Mr. Heaphey finally took the paper and put it into his despatch-box, marvelling not a little in his mind as to the meaning of these inexplicable performances.

      Gradually, however, the whole matter passed out of his mind, until some weeks afterward, while staying with a friend in one of the midland counties, he took the engraving up, and — he could not exactly say why — felt suddenly moved to make a sketch from memory of the lady whose face it recalled to him so vividly. He put this sketch with the engraving back into his despatch-book, and again the subject passed out of his mind.

IV.

      TWO or three weeks passed by. Visiting another friend — in Yorkshire, near the Derbyshire line — Mr. Heaphey found himself seated at dinner next to a gentleman of an old family and of a good estate in Derbyshire, who had entered into correspondence with him some years before, with an eye to inducing him to come down into Derbyshire and paint a portrait there of an invalid child of his to whom he was very much attached and who could not conveniently be carried up to London.

      Finding Mr. Heaphey near his residence, this gentleman entreated him to come over at the end of his Yorkshire visit, pass two or three days with him, and paint this portrait. It was not very convenient for Mr. Heaphey to do this, but such was the urgency of the Derbyshire man that he finally gave way.

      "I shall be going home myself in a day or two," said the Derbyshire man, who was visiting a neighbour of Mr. Heaphey's host in Yorkshire, "and I will have everything ready for you. You will take the train at such a station" (naming it), "change carriages at such that you will find yourself at a little way station, where my carriage will be in waiting for you, and bring you to my house."

      It was a gray, rainy morning when Mr. Heaphey took the train to make his trip into Derbyshire. A ready guard found an empty first-class carriage for him, put his shawls and bags into it, and closed the door. Putting on his travelling-cap and taking out a novel, Mr. Heaphey settled himself back into a corner of the carriage for a comfortable quiet hour in the train.

V.

      JUST before the train was to start, another guard came up, opened the carriage-door, and handed in a lady, with the usual paraphernalia of umbrellas, bags, and shawls.

      The train moved off, and Mr. Heaphey, after awhile glancing round from his corner, became aware that this lady was looking at him fixedly through a brown veil, which obscured and blurred the outlines of her countenance. It is unpleasant to be fixed in this way from behind a veil, and Mr. Heaphey felt unusually and unaccountably restless under the infliction.

      His uneasiness was soon removed, however, for the lady, throwing her veil aside, revealed to him the face of his mysterious visitant of the summer. She seemed not in the least surprised at finding him in the carriage, but very quietly asked him whether he was going to such a place (naming the residence of the gentleman whom he was about to visit), and expressed her satisfaction at meeting him as composedly as if they were ordinary acquaintances who had parted in ordinary circum­stances a week or so before.

      This cool demeanour aided Mr. Heaphey in regaining his composure, and he met her in the same spirit.

      "You have made the sketch of me, have you not, Mr. Heaphey?" she said suddenly.

      "Good heavens, yes! but how did you know that?"

      Deigning no reply, she went on:

      "Why did you not finish it? You had nothing to do the next day at such a place," naming the country seat at which he had really made the sketch.

      Mr. Heaphey stammered out some excuse, which was cut short by her asking him whether the engraving had not helped him as she had told him it would.

      "Very much," he said; "but — but I never quite knew how you sent that to me."

      "No, I suppose not," she said; and, changing the subject, began to speak of some book which she held in her hand.

      The conversation went on until the train reached the point at which Mr. Heaphey was to leave it. The lady apparently intended to continue her journey in the direction of London, for she made no offer to get out, bade Mr. Heaphey good-morning very composedly, and as he got out of the carriage said to him:

      "Now, you will go on with the sketch, and I will try and let you see me again. It should be done."

      Without quite owning it to himself, Mr. Heaphey was greatly pleased to find himself in a different carriage going in a different direction, for it was impossible to resist a singular and uncomfortable impression that he was dealing with a profoundly mysterious, if not with an unearthly, personage; and yet, in the face of the very carriage and demeanour of the lady, and of all the external circum­stances of the affair, it appeared to Mr. Heaphey quite absurd to indulge these impressions.

      He found his host's carriage waiting for him, and was driven to the house, and ushered to his room in time to dress for dinner.

VI.

      THE house was a large, ancient, handsome country gentleman's home, in no wise baronial, but dating back two or three centuries, with broad passages and stairways; family pictures, tapestry hangings, and all the details that go to make up one of the thousand and one stately homes of England throughout our pleasant land.

      Mr. Heaphey found himself alone when he entered the great drawing-room. He walked about, looking at the pictures upon the walls, and so passed into a second smaller drawing-room, whither he was attracted by the sound of the crackling of a wood fire. There a staggering blow awaited him.

      Standing before a tall ancient mantel, with one foot set upon the heavy brass fender, in the light of a great wood fire which sparkled and flamed in the deep chimney-place, stood his fellow-traveller of the morning. She nodded to him politely and with perfect unconcern. He approached and spoke with her, expressing some surprise at finding her under the same roof with himself.

      "How did you come?" he said. "I thought mine was the only train which could reach here to-day."

      "I came by a way of my own," she replied, and went on in a light ordinary conversation until the host and hostess appeared from the larger drawing-room.

      Mr. Heaphey at once advanced to greet them, and fell into conversation with the hostess. He was a little surprised, though not particularly, to find that neither of them made any offer to present him to the lady, who still stood, in no way recognising their presence, by the fireside. Dinner was almost immediately announced. The host invited Mr. Heaphey to give his arm to his hostess, and they passed into the dining-room.

      "You see," said the hostess, as they took their seats at the table, "we have no one here, and it is very kind of you to come and give us your company."

      As the lady of the fireside had entered the room with them, and was at that moment sitting directly opposite to Mr. Heaphey, all these remarks seemed to him most extraordinary.

      He affected, however, not to perceive anything strange in this conversation, and dinner went on, the mysterious lady taking no part whatever in the talking, and, so far as Mr. Heaphey could see, being in no way recognised by the host, the hostess, or the servants who waited at the table.

      As may be imagined, all this did not tend to enhance Mr. Heaphey's comfort at dinner. It was impossible for him to allude to a person who seemed to exist only in his own perceptions, and yet who manifested in the expression of her countenance no sort of consciousness of this extraordinary neglect. When they retired to the drawing-room after dinner, one or two persons coming in from the neighbourhood, conversation became general.

      The mysterious lady moved about from point to point, once or twice speaking with Mr. Heaphey, but never, so far as he could see, exchanging a word with any other person present.

      By the time that he retired to his room, Mr. Heaphey was profoundly upset by this most unaccountable of all the experiences through which he had yet passed in connection with his mysterious visitant of the summer.

      Determined, if he could, to satisfy himself whether he was or was not the victim of an hallucination, he made some excuse for speaking to the footman, who was arranging his clothes before leaving him for the night, about the lady who had dined there.

      The footman looked at him unintelligently at first, and then, with a curious, almost quizzical, expression, assured Mr. Heaphey that he had not the least idea what he was speaking of, as he didn't know that any lady was staying in the house, and as the one or two ladies who had called during the evening had driven home to their residences.

      Seeing that he was to get no light from this quarter, Mr. Heaphey was silent, remained in the house two or three days, finished the portrait which he had undertaken to paint in water-colours, and left.

VII.

      FROM time to time all the circum­stances of this strange acquaintance would recur to him, but he never cared to dwell upon them in his own mind. Still less did he dream of communicating them to any one else.

      He could not regard them as purely a delusion of his own imagination, for there in his despatch-box was the engraving from Heath's Book of Beauty; there was the half-finished sketch of a face which had imprinted itself with an almost terrible distinctness upon his memory; and yet he felt that to hint at any of the circum­stances of his unparalleled adventures would expose him in the minds of other people to suspicions which, but for the material evidences there before him, he would be very apt to entertain of himself.

      So the time passed on. Once or twice, taking the sketch up, Mr. Heaphey had worked upon it until it was well advanced to completion.

      He never took it up excepting under a stress of feeling which he could never define nor resist; he never laid it away again except with a sense of relief and satisfaction.

      Early in the ensuing winter Mr. Heaphey was called to the west of England to keep an engagement made long before with a friend who resided, I think, somewhere in the marches of Wales.

      He started upon this journey from some point the name of which I cannot now recall — for it is many years since Mrs. Murray told me this story — in the Eastern or Midland counties. At all events, he left this point on a Saturday, and his route led through the ancient little cathedral city of Lichfield. On reaching Lichfield great was Mr. Heaphey's disgust to find he could make no connection westward until Monday morning. This condemned him to pass Sunday at Lichfield, a prospect which he was not enough of a philosopher to accept with satisfaction.

VIII.

      THERE are two or three very decent inns in Lichfield, however, and in one of these — I think the Swan — Mr. Heaphey made himself as comfortable as circum­stances would permit.

      He had hardly got through with his dinner when the waiter, to his astonishment, came in with a card on a salver. Taking up this card, Mr. Heaphey read on it the name of a gentleman who many years before had been one of his schoolfellows, but of whom he had seen and heard nothing since he came to years of manhood.

      He had forgotten, in fact, the very existence of the man, and he was entirely at a loss to imagine in what possible way his arrival and his presence in this quiet little inn could have come to the ears of his quondam boyish companion. He bade the waiter, however, show him up at once.

      When the door opened he welcomed, not a man of his own years, but a quiet and rather serious-looking, very courteous young gentleman of twenty-five or twenty-six, who promptly explained that he was the sun and namesake of Mr. Heaphey's old schoolfellow; that he had been sent by his father with a carriage to find Mr. Heaphey at the inn, his father being confined to his room with an illness; and that his father insisted on Mr. Heaphey's leaving the inn and coming to pass his Sunday in Lichfield in their house.

      Mr. Heaphey, overwhelmed at this civility, could not resist expressing his surprise, and asking the young man how in the world his father came to know of his entirely accidental visit to Lichfield.

      "That I can't tell you," said the young man, "but he has been expecting you all day."

      "Well, this passes all comprehension," said Mr. Heaphey, "and I should be very glad to find out how it came to pass." He endeavoured, however, to excuse himself from accepting the hospitality thus unexpectedly proffered him, but in vain. The young man insisted that he could not think of such a thing as going back without Mr. Heaphey, and after a little the artist yielded. His portmanteau and despatch-box were brought down, put in a neat little private carriage which stood at the inn door, and Mr. Heaphey drove to the house of his old acquaintance.

      "I will go up-stairs," said the young man, "and let my father know you are here. He is so anxious to see you, and has been so nervous and restless of late, that I ought to see him a few moments before you go up." And with this he led Mr. Heaphey into a drawing-room, where he presented him to a young lady dressed in mourning as a sister.

      This young lady greeted Mr. Heaphey very cordially, and appeared to have been quite as well aware as her father of his coming to Lichfield, and quite as much interested as her brother in securing his presence in their house.

      "My father," said the young lady, "has been hoping to see you here for months; but it was only to-day that he felt sure of your coming."

      "Yes?" said Mr. Heaphey. "And how in the world did he feel sure of my coming to-day?"

      "That I can't tell you," said the young woman, "but I suppose it is because he had heard from you."

      "Heard from me!" said Mr. Heaphey. "My dear young lady, I have had no communication with your father for years. I am sorry to say I didn't even remember he was living here in Lichfield."

      The young lady looked at him incredulously.

      "How can this be, when you have been painting my sister's portrait?"

      "Painting your sister's portrait!" said Mr. Heaphey. "Pray what is your sister's name?"

      "Her name?" said the young lady, repeating it.

      "I assure you," said Mr. Heaphey, "either I am dreaming or you are. Your sister never sat to me for her portrait. I never heard of it until this moment."

      "You must not say this to my father," said the young lady; "it will kill him. He has been counting on this. There must be some strange mistake."

      "Certainly there is some strange mistake," said Mr. Heaphey, "but I can't understand how I am in any way accountable for it. I assure you I have no recollection of your sister's name — no recollection. Where did she sit to me?"

      "That I don't know," said the young lady; "it must have been before she died."

      "She is no longer living, then?"

      "No; and it is since her death that my father has been so urgent and so eager to secure the portrait you have been painting of her.

      "I can't understand how you didn't know her name; but you will surely recall her face at once, for you have the engraving of the portrait of Lady ⸻, which was taken out of our Book of Beauty and sent to you because of its strange resemblance to her."

      And with this the young lady, rising, handed him a copy of Heath's Book of Beauty opened at the page from which the engraved portrait so long and so mysteriously had been taken.

      The effect of this disclosure upon Mr. Heaphey may be imagined. His countenance changed. He paused a moment, and then said:

      "This is inexplicable. When did your sister die?"

      The date was named, a date not long preceding the time at which his mysterious visitor, had first entered his studio.

      "I have a picture of that young lady," he said, "in my despatch-box, and I will bring it down-stairs to you."

      Going up-stairs, he opened the despatch-box, and returned to the drawing-room with the nearly completed sketch and with the engraved portrait, both of which the young lady received with expressions of the most intense delight.

      She carried them up-stairs to her father, and after a little time Mr. Heaphey was introduced to his old acquaintance, whom he found in a state of inexpressible happiness at the possession of the portrait, and not in the least, apparently, disturbed or concerned as to the way in which it had been painted, or as to any of the circum­stances connected with it.

      He could not sufficiently thank Mr. Heaphey for what he had done, pressed him to name his own remuneration for the work, and exhibited, in short, every symptom of unbounded satisfaction.

      It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Heaphey positively and peremptorily declined any payment whatever for this strange and uncanny piece of work.

      He said as little as possible to the father or to the family as to the circum­stances in which it had been painted, and got out of Lichfield by the earliest train with a sense of intense relief.