From the door, he saw her eyes on the picture, but true to his promise he remained silent, though, as he caught her gaze on the palette, his own eyes took on something of anxiety and foreboding.
“Does he sign his pictures now?” she asked abruptly.
“No. Why?”
“It looked—almost,” she said wearily, “as though the signature had been painted out there at the corner.”
For an instant, St. John eyed his daughter with keen intentness.
“The canvas was scraped in shipping,” he said, at last. “I touched up the spot where the paint was rubbed.”
For a time, both were silent. The father saw that two hectic spots glowed on the girl’s bloodless cheeks, and that her eyes, fixed on the picture, wore a deeply wistful longing.
He, too, knew that this picture was a declaration of love, that in her silence she was torturing herself with the thought that these other eyes had stirred the heart that had remained closed to her. He did not want to admit to her that this was not a genuine Marston; yet, he faltered a moment, and resolved that he could not, even for so necessary a deception, let her suffer.
“That portrait, my child,” he confessed slowly, “was not painted by—by him. It’s by another artist, a lesser man, named Saxon.”
Into the deep-set eyes surged a look of incredulous, but vast, relief. The frail shoulders drew back from their shallow-chested sag, and the thin lips smiled.