He leaned back and laughed at the reminiscence, not unkindly. Mrs. Hardacre, bored by the unprofitable tale, stared at the dim streets out of the brougham window. Norma, on friendlier terms with King, the little human story having perhaps drawn them together, joined in the laugh.
“And now, I suppose, when she grows a bit older, Mr. Padgate will marry her and she will be a dutiful little wife and they will live happy and humdrum ever after.”
“I hope he will provide her with some decent rags to put on,” said Mrs. Hardacre. “Those the child was wearing to-night were fit for a servant maid.”
“Jimmie would give her his skin if she could wear it,” said Morland, somewhat tartly.
This expression of feeling gave him, for the first time, a special place in Norma's esteem. After all, a woman desires to like the man who in a few months' time may be her husband, and hitherto Morland had presented a negativity of character which had baffled and irritated her. The positive trait of loyalty to a friend she welcomed instinctively, although if charged with the emotion she would have repudiated the accusation. When the carriage stopped at the awning and red strip of carpet before the house in Eaton Square where a dance awaited her, and she took leave of him, she returned his handshake with almost a warm pressure and sent him away, a sanguine lover, to his club.
The next morning Constance Deering, taking her on a round of shopping, enquired how the romance was proceeding.
“He has had me on probation,” replied Norma, “and has been examining all my points. I rather think he finds me satisfactory, and is about to make an offer.”
“What an idyllic pair you are!” laughed her friend.
Norma took the matter seriously.
“The man is perfectly right. He is on the lookout for a woman who can keep up or perhaps add to his social prestige, who can conduct the affairs of a large establishment when he enters political life, who can possibly give him a son to inherit his estate, and who can wear his family diamonds with distinction—and it does require a woman of presence to do justice to family diamonds, you know. He looks round society and sees a girl that may suit him. Naturally he takes his time and sizes her up. I have learned patience and so I let him size to his heart's content. On the other hand, what he can give me falls above the lower limit of my requirements, and personally I don't dislike him.”
“Mercy on us!” cried Constance Deering, “the man is head over ears in love with you!”
“Then I like him all the better for dissembling it so effectually,” said Norma, “and I hope he'll go on dissembling to the end of the chapter. I hate sentiment.”
They were walking slowly down Bond Street, and happened to pause before a picture-dealer's window, where a print of a couple of lovers bidding farewell caught Mrs. Deering's attention.
“I call that pretty,” she said. “Do you hate love too?”
Norma twirled her parasol and moved away, waiting for the other.
“Love, my dear Connie, is an appetite of the lower middle classes.”
“My dear Norma!” the other exclaimed, “I do wish Jimmie Padgate could hear you!”
Norma started at the name. “What has he got to do with the matter?”
“That's one of his pictures.”
“Oh, is it?” said Norma, indifferently. But feminine curiosity compelled a swift parting glance at the print.
“I imagine our guileless friend has a lot to learn,” she added. “A few truths about the ways of this wicked world would do him good.”
“I promised to go and look round his studio to-morrow morning; will you come and give him his first lesson?” asked Mrs. Deering, mischievously.
“Certainly not,” replied Norma.
But the destiny she had previously remarked upon seemed to be fulfilling itself. A day or two afterwards his familiar figure burst upon her at a Private View in a small picture-gallery. His eyes brightened as she withdrew from her mother, who was accompanying her, and extended her hand.
“Dear me, who would have thought of seeing you here? Do you care for pictures? Why have n't you told me? I am so glad.”
“Love of Art did n't bring me here, I assure you,” replied Norma.
“Then what did?”
Jimmie in his guilelessness had an uncomfortable way of posing fundamental questions. In that respect he was like a child. Norma smiled in silent contemplation of the real object of their visit. At first her mother had tossed the cards of invitation into the waste-paper basket. It was advertising impudence on the part of the painter man, whom she had met but once, to take her name in vain on the back of an envelope. Then hearing accidentally that the painter man had painted the portraits of many high-born ladies, including that of the Duchess of Wiltshire, and that the Duchess of Wiltshire herself—their own duchess, who gave Mrs. Hardacre the tip of her finger to shake and sometimes the tip of a rasping tongue to meditate upon, whom Mrs. Hardacre had tried any time these ten years to net for Heddon Court, their place in the country—had graciously promised to attend the Private View, in her character of Lady Patroness-in-Chief of the painter man, Mrs. Hardacre had hurried home and had set the servants' hall agog in search of the cards. Eventually they had been discovered in the dust-bin, and she had spent half an hour in cleansing them with bread-crumbs, much to Norma's sardonic amusement. The duchess not having yet arrived, Mrs. Hardacre had fallen back upon the deaf Dowager Countess of Solway, who was discoursing to her in a loud voice on her late husband's method of breeding prize pigs. Norma had broken away from this exhilarating lecture to greet Jimmie.
He kept his eager eyes upon her, still waiting for an answer to his question:
“What did?”
Norma, fairly quick-witted, indicated the walls with a little comprehensive gesture.
“Do you call this simpering, uninspired stuff Art?” she said, begging the question.
“Oh, it's not that,” cried Jimmie, falling into the trap. “It's really very good of its kind. Amazingly clever. Of course it's not highly finished. It's impressionistic. Look at that sweeping line from the throat all the way down to the hem of the skirt,” indicating the picture in front of them and following the curve, painter fashion, with bent-back thumb; “how many of your fellows in the Academy could get that so clean and true?”
“I have just met Mr. Porteous, who said he could n't stay any longer because such quackery made him sick,” said Norma.
Jimmie glanced round the walls. Porteous, the Royal Academician, was right. The colour was thin, the modelling flat, the drawing tricky, the invention poor. A dull soullessness ran through the range of full-length portraits of women. He realised, with some distress, the clever insincerity of the painting; but he had known Foljambe, the author of these coloured crimes, as a fellow-student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and having come to see his work for the first time, could not bear to judge harshly. It was characteristic of him to expatiate on the only merit the work possessed.
“Mr. Porteous even said,” continued Norma, “that it was scandalous such a man should be making thousands when men of genius were making hundreds. It was taking the bread out