Then the lie about the picture.

It had been the shy, foolish impulse of a moment.

But how explain it to Lord Findon?
Fenwick stood there tortured by an intense and morbid distress; realising how much this rich and illustrious person had already entered into his day dream.

For all his pride as an artist--and he was full of it--his trembling, crude ambition had already seized on Lord Findon as a stepping-stone.

He did not know whether he could stoop to court a patron.