“I declare I am, sir,” cried Lady Grayson merrily. “The fact is, you are too modest.—Don’t you think he is far too modest, dear?”
“I am debarred from entering into the discussion,” said the Contessa, with a fixed smile.
“Then I must do all the talking.—Capital! The portrait grows more like at every touch. By the way, Mr. Dale, how is your big picture getting on—the one I saw at your studio?”
In spite of her self-command, Valentina turned pale, and a flash darted from her eyes.
She at his studio!
Then she drew a long breath, the light in her eyes grew fixed, and there was a peculiar hardening in her smile, as Armstrong went on painting, and said calmly—
“The large mythological study I showed you and the Conte?”
“Yes, that one,” said Lady Grayson, who, in spite of her assurance, did not dare to look at her friend, whose smile grew a little harder now, though there was a feeling of triumph glowing at her heart, as she detected her friend’s slip.
“Badly,” said Armstrong quietly. “I beg your pardon, Lady Dellatoria; that smile is too hard. Are you fatigued?”
“Oh no,” she replied; and the smile he was trying to transfer to the canvas came back with a look which he avoided, and he continued hastily—
“I cannot satisfy myself with my sitters. I want a good—a beautiful, intense-looking—face, full of majesty, passion, and refinement; but the models are all so hard and commonplace. I can find beautiful women to sit, but there is a vulgarity in their faces where I want something ethereal or spiritual.”
“Why not get the Contessa to sit?”
“Or Lady Grayson?” said Valentina scornfully.
“Oh, I should sit for Mr. Dale with pleasure.”
“My dear Henriette, how can you be so absurd?”
“Oh, but I do not mean until you have quite done with him, dear.”
“You would not do,” said Dale bluntly.—“Quite still now, please, Lady Dellatoria.”
“Alack and alas! not to be beautiful. But would your present sitter do?”
“I should not presume to ask Lady Dellatoria to sit for a study in a picture to be publicly exhibited,” said the young man coldly.
“But you—so famous.—Ah, here is the Conte!”
“Yes; what is it?” said Dellatoria, entering. “Want me?”
“I knew it,” thought the Contessa. “It was an appointment.”
“Yes, to judge. That picture of Mr. Dale’s. You know—the one we saw that day at his studio.”
The Conte’s eyes contracted a little, and he glanced at his wife, whose face was calm and smiling.
“Oh yes, I remember,” he said—then, in an aside, “You little fool.—What about it?” he added aloud.
“Mr. Dale can’t find a model who would do for Juno. I was suggesting that dearest Valentina should sit.”
“Very good of you, Lady Grayson,” said the Conte shortly; “but her ladyship does not sit for artists.”
“And Mr. Dale does not wish her ladyship to do so, sir,” said the artist, as haughtily as the Conte.
“There, I’ve said something wrong,” cried Lady Grayson. “Poor me! It’s time I went. I had no business to stay and hinder the painting. Good morning, Mr. Dale. Good-bye, Valentina, dear. Ask the Conte to forgive me.”
She bent down and kissed the beautiful face, which did not wince, but there was war between two pairs of eyes. Then, turning round, she held out her hand.
“Good-bye, dreadful man. I’m too awfully sorry I cannot give you a lift on my way back to the park.”
“No, thanks. By-the-by, yes; I want to go to Albert Gate. Would it be taking you out of your way?”
“Oh no. Delighted. My horses don’t have half enough to do.”
“Then come along.”
Armstrong could not help glancing at the couple as they crossed towards the door; and then as he turned back to the canvas his heart began to beat painfully, for he heard a peculiar hissing sound as of a long deep breath being drawn through teeth closely set, and a dangerous feeling of pity entered his breast. He could not paint, but stood fixed with the brush raised, completely mastered by the flood of thought which rushed through his brain. He saw plainly how great cause there was for the coldness and contempt with which the Contessa viewed her husband, and he realised fully the truth of the rumours he had heard of how she—a beautiful English girl—had been hurried into a fashionable marriage with this contemptible, wealthy, titled man. What else could come of it but such a life as he saw too plainly that they led!
He fought against these thoughts, but vainly; and they only opened the way to others still more dangerous. The first time he had met Lady Dellatoria, when she visited his studio in company with her husband, she had seemed attracted to him, and he had felt flattered by the eagerness with which she listened to his words. Then came an invitation to dinner at Portland Place, for the discussion of his undertaking the portrait. That night, the Conte was called away to an engagement, and he was left in that luxurious drawing-room, talking to the clever, refined, and beautiful woman who seemed to hang upon his words.
Soon after he went back to his studio half intoxicated by her smiles; but the next morning he had grown more himself, and had a long talk with Joe Pacey, his greatest intimate, and been advised to paint the portrait by all means, but to hit hard for price.
“Do you no end of good, boy; but take care of yourself; she’s the most beautiful woman in society.”
Dale had laughed contemptuously, accepted the commission, and matters had gone on till it had come to this. He had been forced to be a witness of the breach between husband and wife, the cruelty of the treatment she received, and he had heard that painful drawing in of the breath, as she sat there almost within touch. She, the suffering woman, who had from the first accorded to him what had seemed to be the warmest friendship; and now the blood rose to his brain, and his resolutions, his fierce accusations, appeared to have been all in vain.
He dared not look round in the terrible silence which had ensued. He could only think that he was alone with the woman against whom his friend had warned him, and for the moment, in the giddy sensation that attacked him, he felt that he must rush from the room.
Then he started, and the brush fell from his hand, for there was a quick movement in the chair on his left, and he turned sharply, to find Valentina’s eyes filled with tears, but not dimmed so that he could not read the yearning, passionate look with which she gazed at him, as she said in a low, thrilling whisper—
“You heard—you saw—all. Have you no pity for me—no word to say?”
For a few moments not a word.
The Contessa rose and took a step toward him, with her hands raised appealingly.
“You do not—you cannot—understand,” she half whispered, “or you would speak to me. Can you not see how alone I am in the world, insulted, outraged, by that man whose wife I was almost forced to become? Wife!” she cried, “no, his slave, loaded with fetters of gold, which cut into my flesh till my life becomes insufferable. Mr. Dale—Armstrong, I thought you sympathised with me in my unhappy state. Have I not shown you, since fate threw us so strangely together, that my life has been renewed that everything has seemed changed?”
He looked at her wildly, and the palette he held fell upon the rich thick carpet in the struggle going on within his breast.
“Are