Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/247

Rh and he looked at his sister with momentary sternness. "Has she sent you here to tell me this? What do you mean by the proof?"

Biddy's eyes, at these questions, met her brother's with a strange expression, and for a few seconds, while she looked entreatingly into his own, she wavered there, with parted lips, vaguely stretching out her hands. The next minute she had burst into tears—she was sobbing on his breast. He said "Hallo!" and soothed her; but it was very quickly over. Then she told him what she meant by her "proof," and what she had had on her mind ever since she came into the room. It was a message from Julia, but not to say—not to say what he had asked her just before if she meant; though indeed Biddy, more familiar now, since her brother had had his arm round her, boldly expressed the hope that it might in the end come to the same thing. Julia simply wanted to know (she had instructed Biddy to sound him discreetly) if Nick would undertake her portrait; and the girl wound up this experiment in "sounding" by the statement that their beautiful kinswoman was dying to sit.

"Dying to sit?" repeated Nick, whose turn it was, this time, to feel his colour rise.

"Any time you like after Easter, when she comes up to town. She wants a full-length, and your very best, your most splendid work."

Nick stared, not caring that he had blushed. "Is she serious?"

"Ah, Nick—serious!" Biddy reasoned tenderly. She came nearer to him, and he thought she was going to weep