"These are what he was collecting last year," murmured Billy, hovering over a small cabinet where were some beautiful specimens of antique jewelry brooches, necklaces, armlets, Rajah rings, and anklets, gorgeous in color and exquisite in workmanship.
"Well, here is something you _will_ enjoy," declared Bertram, with an airy flourish. "Do you see those teapots? Well, we can have tea every day in the year, and not use one of them but five times. I"ve counted.
There are exactly seventy-three," he concluded, as he laughingly led the way from the room.
"How about leap year?" quizzed Billy.
"Ho! Trust Will to find another "Old Blue" or a "perfect treasure of a black basalt" by that time," shrugged Bertram.
Below William"s rooms was the floor once Bertram"s, but afterwards given over to the use of Billy and Aunt Hannah. The rooms were open to-day, and were bright with sunshine and roses; but they were very plainly unoccupied.
"And you don"t use them yet?" remonstrated Billy, as she paused at an open door.
"No. These are Mrs. Bertram Henshaw"s rooms," said the youngest Henshaw brother in a voice that made Billy hurry away with a dimpling blush.
"They were Billy"s--and they can never seem any one"s but Billy"s, now,"
declared William to Marie, as they went down the stairs.
"And now for the den and some good stories before the fire," proposed Bertram, as the six reached the first floor again.
"But we haven"t seen your pictures, yet," objected Billy.
Bertram made a deprecatory gesture.
"There"s nothing much--" he began; but he stopped at once, with an odd laugh. "Well, I sha"n"t say _that_," he finished, flinging open the door of his studio, and pressing a b.u.t.ton that flooded the room with light.
The next moment, as they stood before those plaques and panels and canvases--on each of which was a pictured "Billy"--they understood the change in his sentence, and they laughed appreciatively.
""Much," indeed!" exclaimed William.
"Oh, how lovely!" breathed Marie.
"My grief and conscience, Bertram! All these--and of Billy? I knew you had a good many, but--" Aunt Hannah paused impotently, her eyes going from Bertram"s face to the pictures again.
"But how--when did you do them?" queried Marie.
"Some of them from memory. More of them from life. A lot of them were just sketches that I did when she was here in the house four or five years ago," answered Bertram; "like this, for instance." And he pulled into a better light a picture of a laughing, dark-eyed girl holding against her cheek a small gray kitten, with alert, bright eyes. "The original and only s.p.u.n.k," he announced.
"What a dear little cat!" cried Marie.
"You should have seen it--in the flesh," remarked Cyril, dryly. "No paint nor painter could imprison that untamed bit of Satanic mischief on any canvas that ever grew!"
Everybody laughed--everybody but Billy. Billy, indeed, of them all, had been strangely silent ever since they entered the studio. She stood now a little apart. Her eyes were wide, and a bit frightened. Her fingers were twisting the corners of her handkerchief nervously. She was looking to the right and to the left, and everywhere she saw--herself.
Sometimes it was her full face, sometimes her profile; sometimes there were only her eyes peeping from above a fan, or peering from out brown shadows of nothingness. Once it was merely the back of her head showing the ma.s.s of waving hair with its high lights of burnished bronze. Again it was still the back of her head with below it the bare, slender neck and the scarf-draped shoulders. In this picture the curve of a half-turned cheek showed plainly, and in the background was visible a hand holding four playing cards, at which the pictured girl was evidently looking. Sometimes it was a merry Billy with dancing eyes; sometimes a demure Billy with long lashes caressing a flushed cheek.
Sometimes it was a wistful Billy with eyes that looked straight into yours with peculiar appeal. But always it was--Billy.
"There, I think the tilt of this chin is perfect." It was Bertram speaking.
Billy gave a sudden cry. Her face whitened. She stumbled forward.
"No, no, Bertram, you--you didn"t mean the--the tilt of the chin," she faltered wildly.
The man turned in amazement.
"Why--Billy!" he stammered. "Billy, what is it?"
The girl fell back at once. She tried to laugh lightly. She had seen the dismayed questioning in her lover"s eyes, and in the eyes of William and the others.
"N-nothing," she gesticulated hurriedly. "It was nothing at all, truly."
"But, Billy, it _was_ something." Bertram"s eyes were still troubled.
"Was it the picture? I thought you liked this picture."
Billy laughed again--this time more naturally.
"Bertram, I"m ashamed of you--expecting me to say I "like" any of this,"
she scolded, with a wave of her hands toward the omnipresent Billy.
"Why, I feel as if I were in a room with a thousand mirrors, and that I"d been discovered putting rouge on my cheeks and lampblack on my eyebrows!"
William laughed fondly. Aunt Hannah and Marie gave an indulgent smile.
Cyril actually chuckled. Bertram only still wore a puzzled expression as he laid aside the canvas in his hands.
Billy examined intently a sketch she had found with its back to the wall. It was not a pretty sketch; it was not even a finished one, and Billy did not in the least care what it was. But her lips cried interestedly:
"Oh, Bertram, what is this?"
There was no answer. Bertram was still engaged, apparently, in putting away some sketches. Over by the doorway leading to the den Marie and Aunt Hannah, followed by William and Cyril, were just disappearing behind a huge easel. In another minute the merry chatter of their voices came from the room beyond. Bertram hurried then straight across the studio to the girl still bending over the sketch in the corner.
"Bertram!" gasped Billy, as a kiss brushed her cheek.
"Pooh! They"re gone. Besides, what if they did see? Billy, what was the matter with the tilt of that chin?"
Billy gave an hysterical little laugh--at least, Bertram tried to a.s.sure himself that it was a laugh, though it had sounded almost like a sob.
"Bertram, if you say another word about--about the tilt of that chin, I shall _scream!_" she panted.
"Why, Billy!"
With a nervous little movement Billy turned and began to reverse the canvases nearest her.
"Come, sir," she commanded gayly. "Billy has been on exhibition quite long enough. It is high time she was turned face to the wall to meditate, and grow more modest."
Bertram did not answer. Neither did he make a move to a.s.sist her. His ardent gray eyes were following her slim, graceful figure admiringly.
"Billy, it doesn"t seem true, yet, that you"re really mine," he said at last, in a low voice shaken with emotion.
Billy turned abruptly. A peculiar radiance shone in her eyes and glorified her face. As she stood, she was close to a picture on an easel and full in the soft glow of the shaded lights above it.
"Then you _do_ want me," she began, "--just _me!_--not to--" she stopped short. The man opposite had taken an eager step toward her. On his face was the look she knew so well, the look she had come almost to dread--the "painting look."