"Have you made up your mind who is to be Sisera?" asked Mrs. Broughton.
"I think I shall put in my own face," said Dalrymple; "if Miss Van Siever does not object."
"Not in the least," said Clara, speaking without moving her face—almost without moving her lips.
"That will be excellent," said Mrs. Broughton. She was still quite cheerful, and really laughed as she spoke. "Shall you like the idea, Clara, of striking the nail right through his head?"
"Oh, yes; as well his head as another's. I shall seem to be having my revenge for all the trouble he has given me."
There was a slight pause, and then Dalrymple spoke. "You have had that already, in striking me right through the heart."
"What a very pretty speech! Was it not, my dear?" said Mrs. Broughton. And then Mrs. Broughton laughed. There was something slightly hysterical in her laugh which grated on Dalrymple's ears,—something which seemed to tell him that at the present moment his dear friend was not going to assist him honestly in his effort.
"Only that I should put him out, I would get up and make a curtsey," said Clara. No young lady could ever talk of making a curtsey for such a speech if she supposed it to have been made in earnestness. And Clara, no doubt, understood that a man might make a hundred such speeches in the presence of a third person without any danger that they would be taken as meaning anything. All this Dalrymple knew, and began to think that he had better put down his palette and brush, and do the work which he had before him in the most prosaic language that he could use. He could, at any rate, succeed in making Clara acknowledge his intention in this way. He waited still for a minute or two, and it seemed to him that Mrs. Broughton had no intention of piling her fagots on the present occasion. It might be that the remembrance of her husband's ruin prevented her from sacrificing herself in the other direction also.
"I am not very good at pretty speeches, but I am good at telling the truth," said Dalrymple.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Broughton, still with a touch of hysterical action in her throat. "Upon my word, Conway, you know how to praise yourself."