"No question of your"s could be im--could be anything but flattering.
But since you _are_ interested--"
"Not at all," she said politely.
"Oh, but do be interested," he urged, intent on checking her inconvenient interest, "because, really, it is rather interesting when you come to think of it. I was painting my big picture--I wish you"d come and see it, by the way. Will you some day, and have tea in my studio?"
"I should love it. When shall I come?"
"Whenever you will."
He wished she would ask another question about Betty, but she wouldn"t. He had to go on, a little awkwardly.
"Well, I only knew them for a week--her and her aunt and her father--and she"s a nice, quiet little thing. The father"s a parson--all of them are all that there is of most respectable."
She listened but she did not speak.
"And I was rather surprised to see her here. And for the moment I thought the woman with her was--well, the last kind of woman who could have been with her, don"t you know."
"I see," said Lady St. Craye. "Well, it"s fortunate that the dark woman isn"t that kind of woman. No doubt you"ll be seeing your little friend. You might ask her to tea when I come to see your picture."
"I wish I could." Vernon"s manner was never so frank as when he was most on his guard. "She"d love to know you. I wish I could ask them to tea, but I don"t know them well enough. And their address I don"t know at all. It"s a pity; she"s a nice little thing."
It was beautifully done. Lady St. Craye inwardly applauded Vernon"s acting, and none the less that her own part had grown strangely difficult. She was suddenly conscious of a longing to be alone--to let her face go. She gave herself a moment"s pause, caught at her fine courage and said:
"Yes, it is a pity. However, I daresay it"s safer for her that you can"t ask her to tea. She _is_ a nice little thing, and she might fall in love with you, and then, your modesty appeased, you might follow suit! Isn"t it annoying when one can"t pick up the thread of a conversation? All the time you"ve been talking I"ve been wondering what we were talking about before I pointed out the fur hat to you.
And I nearly remember, and I can"t quite. That is always so worrying, isn"t it?"
Her acting was as good as his. And his perception at the moment less clear than hers.
He gave a breath of relief. It would never have done to have Lady St.
Craye spying on him and Betty; and now he knew that she was in Paris he knew too that it would be "him and Betty."
"We were talking," he said carefully, "about calling names."
"Oh, thank you!--When one can"t remember those silly little things it"s like wanting to sneeze and not being able to, isn"t it? But we must turn back, or I shall be late for dinner, and I daren"t think of the names my hostess will call me then. She has a vocabulary, you know." She named a name and Vernon thought it was he who kept the talk busy among acquaintances till the moment for parting. Lady St. Craye knew that it was she.
The moment Betty had bowed to Mr. Vernon she turned her head in answer to the pressure on her arm.
"Who"s that?" her friend asked.
Betty named him, and in a voice genuinely unconcerned.
"How long have you known him?"
"I knew him for a week last Spring: he gave me a few lessons. He is a great favourite of my aunt"s, but we don"t know him much. And I thought he was in Vienna."
"Does he know where you are?"
"No."
"Then mind he doesn"t."
"Why?"
"Because when girls are living alone they can"t be too careful.
Remember you"re the person that"s responsible for Betty Desmond now.
You haven"t your aunt and your father to take care of you."
"I"ve got you," said Betty affectionately.
"Yes, you"ve got me," said her friend.
Life in the new rooms was going very easily and pleasantly. Betty had covered some cushions with the soft green silk of an old evening dress Aunt Julia had given her; she had bought chrysanthemums in pots; and now all her little belongings, the same that had "given the _cachet_"
to her boudoir bedroom at home lay about, and here, in this foreign setting, did really stamp the room with a pretty, delicate, conventional individuality. The embroidered blotting-book, the silver pen-tray, the wicker work-basket lined with blue satin, the long worked pin-cushion stuck with Betty"s sparkling hat-pins,--all these, commonplace at Long Barton were here not commonplace. There was nothing of Paula"s lying about. She had brought nothing with her, and had fetched nothing from her room save clothes--dresses and hats of the plainest.
The experiments in cooking were amusing; so were the marketings in odd little shops that sold what one wanted, and a great many things that one had never heard of. The round of concerts and theatres and tram-rides had not begun yet. In the evenings Betty drew, while Paula read aloud--from the library of stray Tauchnitz books Betty had gleaned from foreign book-stalls. It was a very busy, pleasant home-life. And the studio life did not lack interest.
Betty suffered a martyrdom of nervousness when first--a little late--she entered the Atelier. It is a large light room; a semi-circular alcove at one end, hung with pleasant-coloured drapery, holds a grand piano. All along one side are big windows that give on an old garden--once a convent garden where nuns used to walk, telling their beads. The walls are covered with sketches, posters, studies.
Betty looked nervously round--the scene was agitatingly unfamiliar.
The strange faces, the girls in many-hued painting pinafores, the little forest of easels, and on the square wooden platform the model--smooth, brown, with limbs set, moveless as a figure of wax.
Betty got to work, as soon as she knew how one began to get to work.
It was her first attempt at a drawing from the life, saving certain not unsuccessful caricatures of her fellow pupils, her professor and her chaperon. So far she had only been set to do landscape, and laborious drawings of casts from the antique. The work was much harder than she had expected. And the heat was overpowering. She wondered how these other girls could stand it. Their amused, half-patronising, half-disdainful glances made her furious.
She rubbed out most of the lines she had put in and gasped for breath.
The room, the students, the naked brown girl on the model"s throne, all swam before her eyes. She got to the door somehow, opened and shut it, and found herself sitting on the top stair with closed eyelids and heart beating heavily.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Betty looked nervously around--the scene was agitatingly unfamiliar"]
Some one held water to her lips. She was being fanned with a handkerchief.
"I"m all right," she said.
"Yes, it"s hotter than usual to-day," said the handkerchief-holder, fanning vigorously.
"Why do they have it so hot?" asked poor Betty.
"Because of the model, of course. Poor thing! she hasn"t got a nice blue gown and a pinky-greeny pinafore to keep her warm. We have to try to match the garden of Eden climate--when we"re drawing from a girl who"s only allowed to use Eve"s fashion plates."
Betty laughed and opened her eyes.
"How jolly of you to come out after me," she said.
"Oh, I was just the same at first. All right now? I ought to get back.
You just sit here till you feel fit again. So long!"
So Betty sat there on the bare wide brown stair, staring at the window, till things had steadied themselves, and then she went back to her work.