Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/77

 to time. Then her eyelids drooped, her head nodded sleepily forward, and she recovered her equilibrium with a start.

The woman behind the drawing-desk watched the small blonde head as it nodded again. Then she suddenly rose to her feet, turning to the nurse as she spoke.

"This child is tired," she said in the best German at her command.

"Yes," admitted the woman in the nurse's uniform.

"You will be so good as to take her back to the hotel. The pose is useless now."

"You do not need her?"

"The picture can be finished without a sitter."

And as though to close all argument, the miniature-painter crossed the room to the door and opened it. The nurse tied the child's hat-ribbons under her chin.

"I shall not need you again," Maura Lambert was repeating, with the ghost of a smile. "Only I should like to speak with the grandmother for a few minutes."

"But the grandmother is quite deaf," protested the slightly puzzled German woman.

"Notwithstanding that," was the other woman's reply in English, "we shall get on very nicely."

Kestner, at that first message of dismissal, had risen to his feet. His instincts warned him of something electric in the air, of something impending. His initial impulse was to intercept the departing couple. But on second thoughts he let them pass out through the opened door without speaking.

The calm-eyed young woman closed the door again and crossed slowly to the drawing-desk.