Durban lay below them in green and white array, but the green was too green, and the white blazed even through the drapery of passion-plant leaves that hung and clambered on the verandah and let in the sunshine upon them in jaggling Chinese patterns. The garden was delightfully, raggedly picturesque. Two sloping lawns were divided by a tall hedge of Barbadoes-thorn. There was a grove of orange-trees, and a miniature forest of mangoes. Scattered everywhere, grew golden clots of sunflowers, and away to the right a big Bougainvillea bush flaunted its fearful purple-magenta blossoms against the blue. Far beyond was the sea.
The Portals' house stood so high on the Berea that no sound from the town or the sea reached it on a still day. The peace in the verandah was unbroken, save for the cheep-cheeping of some tame guinea-fowl in a neighbouring garden.
If only Mrs. Gruyère could have ceased from troubling, they would all have been at rest. "Why can she not be calm and still, like Mrs. Lace?" thought Abinger. Mrs. Lace was not over-burdened with brains, but she could say "Oh!" and "Really?" quite prettily at appropriate intervals, and he much preferred her to Mrs. Gruyère, a most tiresome person, who, if you did not tell her the truth, invented it. She now began to worry Mrs. Portal about a girl inside, whom Abinger, not long arrived and having got no further than his present seat in the verandah, had not seen, but from the venomous tone of Mrs. Gruyère's inquiries he gathered that she must, in some fashion, be worth seeing. Mrs. Portal said in an airy way she had, that she knew nothing of Miss Chard except that she was a Cheltenham College girl, and had pretty ankles—"both highly desirable qualifications, surely?"
Mrs. Gruyère, who had been educated at a Colonial seminary, immediately drew her feet, which had been obstructing Abinger's view of the Indian Ocean, into the seclusion of her peculiarly ungraceful, though doubtless expensive, skirt, and pursued the subject with more intense malignity. Abinger was of opinion that Mrs. Portal had probably made a life-long enemy for Miss Chard: which showed that she was harassed, for he knew her to be the soul of tact and kindliness. As an old ally, he felt that it behoved him to listen and prepare a weapon for the defence.
"But, dear Mrs. Portal, desirable qualifications are not always sufficient ones. Where did she come from, and who are her people, I wonder? It seems strange in a small place like Durban, not to have met her before! What does she want here?"
"She paints charmingly," was all Mrs. Portal vouchsafed—"most beautiful little water-colours." After a moment's consideration she added: "She is going to do my miniature."
Thereafter, she looked dreamily into space, apparently thinking of something else—an old ruse of hers when harassed about her harum-scarum acquaintances. Abinger began to think it highly probable that she had met the remarkable Miss Chard in a tea-shop, become interested in her face (or her ankles), and gone up and spoken to her; but he quite understood that these illegitimate proceedings must be concealed from such a keeper of seals and red tape as Mrs. Gruyère.
"Indeed! An artist?" that lady insisted abominably. "I wonder if——"
Mrs. Portal removed her charming eyes from blue space and looked for the hundredth part of a second in the direction of Abinger. He dashed briskly into the conversation.
"Yes; an exceedingly c-clever artist. I saw an exhibition of her pictures somewhere in Bond Street last year. Some of her sunset-effects were brilliant—quite Whistlerian. But," he cocked his head meditatively for a second, "if I remember rightly, it was with her miniatures that she made her chief hit—yes, decidedly her——"