'Ethelberta, you have my heart--my whole heart. You have had it ever since I first saw you. Now you understand me, and no pretending that you don't, mind, this second time.'
'I understood you long ago; you have not understood me.'
'You are mysterious,' he said lightly; 'and perhaps if I disentangle your mystery I shall find it to cover--indifference. I hope it does--for your sake.'
'How can you say so!' she exclaimed reproachfully. 'Yet I wish it did too--I wish it did cover indifference--for yours. But you have all of me that you care to have, and may keep it for life if you wish to. Listen, surely there was a knock at the door? Let us go inside the room: I am always uneasy when anybody comes, lest any awkward discovery should be made by a visitor of my miserable contrivances for keeping up the establishment.'
Joey met them before they had left the landing.
'Please, Berta,' he whispered, 'Mr. Ladywell has called, and I've showed him into the liberry. You know, Berta, this is how it was, you know: I thought you and Mr. Julian were in the drawing-room, and wouldn't want him to see ye together, and so I asked him to step into the liberry a minute.'
'You must improve your way of speaking,' she said, with quick embarrassment, whether at the mention of Ladywell's name before Julian, or at the way Joey coupled herself with Christopher, was quite uncertain. 'Will you excuse me for a few moments?' she said, turning to Christopher. 'Pray sit down; I shall not be long.' And she glided downstairs.
They had been standing just by the drawing-room door, and Christopher turned back into the room with no very satisfactory countenance. It was very odd, he thought, that she should go down to Ladywell in that mysterious manner, when he might have been admitted to where they were talking without any trouble at all.
What could Ladywell have to say, as an acquaintance calling upon her for a few minutes, that he was not to hear? Indeed, if it came to that, what right had Ladywell to call upon her at all, even though she were a widow, and to some extent chartered to live in a way which might be considered a trifle free if indulged in by other young women. This was the first time that he himself had ventured into her house on that very account--a doubt whether it was quite proper to call, considering her youth, and the fertility of her position as ground for scandal. But no sooner did he arrive than here was Ladywell blundering in, and, since this conjunction had occurred on his first visit, the chances were that Ladywell came very often.
Julian walked up and down the room, every moment expanding itself to a minute in his impatience at the delay and vexation at the cause.
After scrutinizing for the fifth time every object on the walls as if afflicted with microscopic closeness of sight, his hands under his coat-tails, and his person jigging up and down upon his toes, he heard her coming up the stairs. When she entered the apartment her appearance was decidedly that of a person subsiding after some little excitement.
'I did not calculate upon being so long,' she said sweetly, at the same time throwing back her face and smiling. 'But I--was longer than I expected.'
'It seemed rather long,' said Christopher gloomily, 'but I don't mind it.'
'I am glad of that,' said Ethelberta.
'As you asked me to stay, I was very pleased to do so, and always should be; but I think that now I will wish you good-bye.'
'You are not vexed with me?' she said, looking quite into his face.
'Mr. Ladywell is nobody, you know.'
'Nobody?'
'Well, he is not much, I mean. The case is, that I am sitting to him for a subject in which my face is to be used--otherwise than as a portrait--and he called about it.'
'May I say,' said Christopher, 'that if you want yourself painted, you are ill-advised not to let it be done by a man who knows how to use the brush a little?'
