Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/225

Rh blue, with a touch of tragedy in the looseness of the skin-fold under the thin and high circling brows.

It was not the sort of face to make Conkling feel altogether at ease. Yet it held him spellbound. It seemed to step from another century.

He sat behind the fragile shelter of his easel, studying that face as it came to a stop before him, as it towered above him with a frown of interrogation on its flinty brows.

"Might I make so bold as to inquire the nature of your visit here?" the woman demanded in a voice as austere and unconceding as her face.

"The young lady said I might make a sketch of the garden," he explained, exasperated by the meekness which had crept into his own voice.

The scorn on the lean old face confronting him did not add to Conkling's happiness.

"Gentlemen were once in the habit of rising, as I remember it, when accosted by a lady."