Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/80

 neck was gracefully knotted and a very clean handkerchief lay on the small table, with a bowl of violets beside it.

'Ah, it is too good to be believed! I can hardly understand it yet,' she said. 'That you have come; that you are to stay; that I am to see you with peace and quietness of heart.'

'Where's the parrot?' asked Graham. 'He is to go into the portrait, you know.'

'The portrait? Do you really mean to paint my portrait?'

'I've come back to Buissac to paint it.' The old lady's happiness seemed to have infected Graham and to have dispelled his clouds and, again, as she saw him smile upon her and saw her smile of adoration answer him, Jill felt the stir of trouble, of pity. It was almost as if Dick were a resplendent, careless sun-god and the old lady a hapless, rapturous Semele doomed to be shrivelled by such rays.

'But Coco is dead,' she told him. 'Can you paint me without Coco?'

'Dead? Parrots never die.'

'Ah;—Coco died, however. Yes. It is too true. And of old age, I fear; like the rest of us. Joseph found him lying on the floor of his cage one morning; cold and stiff. So it will be with me before so long.'

'Nonsense. You're not going to die in your cage,' Graham reminded her. 'You are going to die on a mountain-pass on an autumn morning, with the vineyards below you and the menacing French sky above.'