Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/44

Rh beauty of colouring; the obliquity of vision seemed intensified; the expression she had caught was a transient one, and unpleasing. There was likeness, but it was the likeness of a cheap photograph. She dashed down her palette and brushes on the fourth morning, the morning of the day on which the colonel was to leave Farley, and cried—

"It is of no use! Vandyck would have painted you, but I can't. It is a daub—a caricature. I shall destroy it!"

"Oh no, you won't," he said quietly. "You must turn its back to the wall, and not look at it till I come back. You will look at it then with a fresh eye."

"You are coming back, then?" she asked quickly.

"Your uncle and aunt wish me to do so. Shall I?"

"I shall be very glad," she replied quickly.

He had risen from his chair, and walked a step or two forwards, looking down full into her face before he replied slowly—

"When would you wish me to come?"

The second question might be taken, of course, as still referring to the portrait; and it was as such that she accepted it.

"Oh, I feel now as if I never could go on with this beastly thing. But if you are really kind enough to sit again whenever you return, perhaps I might try, or—or begin another head."

"You mustn't destroy that one," he said very softly. "Looking at it by-and-by will bring back such awfully nice recollections of these hours to me, I'm sure."

"To you? Oh, but I don't mean you to have it!"