"It was a very trifling service," said the young man, courteously. "I wish it had been my good fortune to do you a greater one. This was nothing."
"Foreign!" murmured the artist to himself, as the stranger returned to his lair behind the thicket, where he seemed to be occupying himself in putting on his socks and boots once more. "No Englishman would have answered in that way. I wish he had not disappeared so quickly. I should like to have made a sketch of his head. Hum! I shall not sketch much to-day, I fancy."
He shut up his paint-box with an air of resolution, and walked leisurely to the spot where the young man was completing his toilet. "I ought perhaps to explain," he began, with an air which he fancied was Machiavellian in its simplicity, "that the loss of that umbrella would have been a serious matter to me. It might have entailed another and more serious loss—the loss of my liberty."
The young man looked up with a puzzled and slightly doubtful expression. "I beg your pardon," he said. "The loss of——"
"The loss of my liberty," said the Englishman, in a louder and rather triumphant tone of voice. "The fact is, my dear sir, that I have a very tender and careful wife, and an equally tender and careful daughter and niece, who have so little confidence in my power of caring for my own safety that they have at various times threatened to accompany me in all my sketching expeditions. Now, if I came home to them and confessed that I had been attacked by a troop of savage Italian children, who tossed my umbrella into the river, do you think I should ever be allowed to venture out alone again?"
The young man smiled, with a look of comprehension.
"Can I be of any further use to you?" he said. "Can I walk back to the town with you, or carry any of your things?"
"You can be of very great use to me, indeed," said the gentleman, opening his sketch-book in a great hurry, and then producing a card from some concealed pocket in his velvet coat. "I'm an artist—allow me to introduce myself—my name is Heron; you would be of the very greatest use to me if you would allow me to—to make a sketch of your head for a picture that I am doing just now. It is the very thing—if you will excuse the liberty that I am taking——"
He had his pencil ready, but he faltered a little as he saw the sudden change which came over his new acquaintance's face at the sound of his proposition. The young man flushed to his temples, and then turned suddenly pale. He did not speak, but Mr. Heron inferred offence from his silence, and became exceedingly profuse in his apologies.
"It is of no consequence," said the stranger, breaking in upon Mr. Heron's incoherent sentences with some abruptness. "I was merely surprised for the moment; and, after all—I think I must ask you to excuse me; I have a great dislike—a sort of nervous dislike—to sitting for a portrait. I would rather that you did not sketch me, if you please."