Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/60

 Miss Keating, who showed small delight at the prospect of a sitter, explained that the cost of a miniature would be forty pounds.

The uniformed nurse made it as clear as she could that the old lady was quite deaf, that she was whimsical, but that she was too wealthy to quibble over a matter of price. And Miss Keating, having lifted the child's face and gazed into its shy and innocent eyes, admitted that a portrait might be attempted and that it might be completed in a couple of sittings. After some hesitation, she even acknowledged that the first sitting might take place that morning.

Thereupon, this being vociferously explained to the old lady, through the ear-trumpet, that worthy calmly settled herself in an arm-chair at the far end of the big room with its all but bare walls and its moderated north light.

There, with the self-immuring tendency of the deaf, she promptly fell asleep. She dozed, huddled up in her chair, apparently oblivious of the further arrangements for the sitting, such as the placing of the subject in the most favourable light, the addition of a touch of colour in the form of a hair-ribbon, the wheeling about of a bevel-topped drawing-desk, and the arraying of the needed pigments. The nurse, seating herself by one of the windows, produced a paper-covered edition of a Sudermann novel and promptly lost herself in its pages.

The old lady in the shadows at the far end of the room apparently continued to doze behind her amber-coloured glasses. But in a light less accommodating it might have been observed that nothing which took