"Chancery! Really, Sylvia! I know! In abeyance, that's the word," said Savile. He seemed to take special pleasure in it. "Yes, abeyance," he repeated, with a smile. "Well, good-bye! I'm going out." He looked to see that his trousers were turned up and the last button of his waistcoat left unfastened in the correct Eton fashion, and said, "Do look all right in our box to-night, Sylvia. You can if you like, you know."
"I promise, Savile! I'd do anything for you! I shall never forget."
"You know, looking decent can't do any harm anyway anyhow, to anybody. Never be seen out of uniform." He stopped at the door to say very kindly, "Buck up, dear, and don't go confiding in people—I know what girls are. I suppose now," remarked Savile sarcastically, "that you want a powder-puff, and a cup of tea. I'll tell Price—about the tea, I mean."
CHAPTER XII
AT THE STUDIO
Woodville let himself in with the key, and sat down, in deep despondency, in front of his easel. On it was a second copy of a copy that some one had found him doing at the National Gallery of the great Leonardo. It was not good, and it made him sick to look at it. The studio was a battered little barn in the depths of Chelsea, with the usual dull scent of stale paint and staler tobacco, and very little else; it was quite devoid of the ordinary artistic trappings. From the window shrill cries were heard from the ragged children, who fought and played in the gutter of a sordid street. Woodville had come here to think.
He knew how shocked and distressed Sylvia had been when he had ventured to say that he thought he saw something in the Athenian scheme. He smiled with a slight reaction of gaiety at his surroundings, and wondered, for the hundredth time, why that extraordinary old American lady at the National Gallery had actually ordered from him the second copy of his picture. How marvellously bad it was!
An unusual noise in the street—that of a hansom cab rattling up to the door—startled him. He went to the window, with a strange feeling at his heart. It was impossible that it could be Sylvia; she did not even know the address. It was Sylvia, in pale grey, gracefully paying the cabman while dirty children collected round her feet. He saw through the window that she smiled at them, and gave them a bunch of violets and some money, for which they fought. Horrified, he almost fell down the stairs and opened the door. There was no one else in the house.