“It seems rather brutal to drag him here,” suggested Anne Preston. “I, for one, am willing to spare him the ordeal.”
“However,” pursued Mr. Bellton with some zest of recital, “I have warned him. I told him what dangerous batteries of eyes he must encounter. It seemed to me unfair to let him charge into the lists of loveliness all unarmed—with his heart behind no shield.”
“And he ... how did he take your warning?” demanded Miss Buford.
“I think it is his craven idea to avoid the danger and retreat at the first opportunity. He said that he was a painter, had even been a cow-puncher once, but that society was beyond his powers and his taste.”
The group had been neglecting the track. Now, from the grandstand came once more the noisy outburst that ushers the horses into the stretch, and conversation died as the party came to its feet.
None of its members noticed for the moment the two young men who had made their way between the chairs of the verandah until they stood just back of the group, awaiting their turn for recognition.
As the horses crossed the wire and the pandemonium of the stand fell away, George Steele stepped forward to present his guest.
“This is Mr. Robert Saxon,” he announced. “He will paint the portraits of you girls almost as beautiful as you really are.... It’s as far as mere art can go.”
Saxon stood a trifle abashed at the form of presentation as the group turned to greet him. Something in the distance had caught Duska Filson’s imagination-brimming eyes. She was sitting with her back turned, and did not hear Steele’s approach nor turn with the others.
Saxon’s casually critical glance passed rapidly over the almost too flawless beauty of the Preston sisters and the flower-like charm of little Miss Buford, then fell on a slender girl in a simple pongee gown and a soft, wide-brimmed Panama hat. Under the hat-brim, he caught the glimpse of an ear that might have been fashioned by a jeweler and a curling tendril of brown hair. If Saxon had indeed been the timorous man Bellton intimated, the glimpse would have thrown him into panic. As it was, he showed no sign of alarm.