Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/44

 smile:  ' Vous êtes charmants tous les deux, '  she assured them. 'But who could think of painting an ancient harridan like myself when he has before him a Hebe like the one I see. Madame, you are the true tête de keepsake type.'

Again Graham dropped his slow 'Ha-ha.' Graham's laugh was a singularly ungregarious affair. It did not take you into his confidence; it excluded you, rather, from all participation with the sources of his mirth. 'You don't know what you are talking about,' he told the poor old lady. 'The tête de keepsake has sloping shoulders and ringlets and a rosebud mouth. Why are French people always four or five generations behind the English period?—You still read Byron, I suppose, and imagine English life like the life in Dickens. Jill isn't interesting æsthetically; but she's not as bad as a tête de keepsake, '  said the dispassionate husband, while Madame de Lamouderie's attention remained riveted upon him; 'Reynolds might have painted her, or Romney. But she isn't interesting in design or colour; while you are.'

Madame de Lamouderie glanced almost timidly at Jill as this preference was announced; but Jill was laughing.

'It's quite true. Artists, real ones, like Dick, never care to paint me. Only one ever did, and that was on a horse, and he did it because of the horse, not because of me: I went well with it. Character is what they like, you know, and I haven't any character.'

'But then, do they prefer a mummy to a beautiful