"She hid them," he cried. "Damme but she hid them."
I felt inclined to rise from my chair and determine my visits there and then. I changed my mind, however, bethinking me that the couple were poor, and that if I acted on the inclination, I should be punishing not merely the husband but the wife as well.
To drive the notion finally from my head I needed nothing more than that by accident I should chance upon Mrs. Herbert on the stairs. For she spoke to that very point as I wished her good day.
"It will be good-bye you mean, Mr. Clavering," she answered, with something of a sigh for the loss which would befall them, since the defection of a client thus prematurely could not but damage his reputation in those parts.
"It will be good-bye if you wish it," I returned with a laugh, "but not otherwise."
Mrs. Herbert gave a start and looked across my shoulder. I turned sharply and saw Mr. Herbert himself standing in the doorway above me. He must have heard the words, I knew, but he stood quite still, his face passionless as stone, and for that reason, maybe, I did not at the time consider the construction he would be likely to put on them.
"Speaking for myself," I continued, "I shall not easily part from Mr. Herbert until the picture is finished and in my safe keeping."
So I spake with a polite bow to the painter, little thinking in how strange and hazardous a fashion I was destined to fulfil my words.
It must not, however, be thought that the pair were ever a-seething in this pot of quarrels. The sun shone betwixt the thunderclaps and with no dubious rays. At times, for instance, Mrs. Herbert would bring a book of plays into the room and read them aloud whilst her husband worked, and I—I, alas! watched the changes of her face. Once I remember she read in this way Mr. Congreve's "Love for Love," with a decent slurring of some passages and a romantical declaiming of others, at which Mr. Herbert would break into languishments and sighs, and Mr. Lawrence Clavering would feel himself the most awkward intruder in the world.
It was in the midst of this particular reading that Anthony Herbert was called downstairs upon some business, and she and I were left for a little to our devices. Mrs. Herbert continued to read with her eyes glued upon the pages, but gradually I could not but notice that a certain constraint and awkwardness crept into her voice. At last she stumbled over a passage and stopped. I rose from my chair, and, sensible that a like awkwardness was stealing over me, went and gazed at the picture. I made the mistake, however, of praising it, and of praising it, perhaps, with some extravagance, for the encomium naturally enough being couched in that vein, brought the artist's wife across the room to consider of it too.