Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/64

 being shaken out of her sleep, fumbled with scratch-pad and ear-trumpet and finally came to an understanding of the situation.

She was by no means willing to be put off. The miniature was begun, and there was no reason why it should not be finished, and finished before they started North.

"Then it will have to be in the evening," announced the owner of the studio, "for my days for the rest of the week will be quite taken up."

To this the old lady in black eventually agreed, provided the work could be properly done by electric-light. On being reassured of this the group moved brokenly towards the door.

But for one brief moment the eyes behind the amber-coloured lenses searched the face of the woman so inhospitably ushering them out. Still again about that self-contained and ascetic face the searching eyes seemed able to discern some vague sense of the pathos of isolation, as though a once ardent and buoyant spirit had been driven under protest into a shadowy underworld of solitude.

"To-morrow evening at eight," the young woman with the voice as clear and reedy as a clarionet was quietly repeating, as she held the door for her oddly-sorted visitors.

The child smiled shyly back at her. The German nurse nodded pleasantly. But the figure in black with the silver-mounted old ear-trumpet neither ventured a word of farewell nor essayed a backward glance. She merely trudged stolidly out behind the others.

At the entrance door her cane slipped from her