"Indeed you are mistaken about Miss Lorimer."
Darrell gave a short laugh. "I beg your pardon, my dear fellow!"
Frank frowned, and Darrell, going forward to the Lorimers, preferred his request.
Phyllis looked pleased; and Gertrude, suppressing the signs of her secret dislike to the scheme, said, quietly:
"Phyllis must refer you to her sister Fanny. It depends on whether she can spare the time to bring her to your studio."
She glanced up as she spoke, and met, almost with open defiance, the heavy grey eyes of the man opposite. From these she perceived the irony to have faded; she read nothing there but a cold dislike.
It was an old, old story the fierce yet silent opposition between these two people; an inevitable antipathy; a strife of type and type, of class and class, rather than of individuals: the strife of the woman who demands respect, with the man who refuses to grant it.
* * * * *
Phyllis was in high feather at her successful afternoon, at the compliment paid her by the great Sidney in particular; and Fanny rather brightened at the prospect of what bore even so distant a resemblance to an occupation, as chaperoning her sister to a studio.
Only Conny was silent and depressed, and when they reached Baker-street, followed Gertrude to her room. Here she flung herself on the bed, regardless of her new transparent black hat, and its daffodil trimmings.