“I went to him, as you told me to do,” he began.
Silvia interrupted him. She wanted him to do himself justice.
“No, my dear; you went quite of your own accord,” she said. “I never urged you.”
Peter’s eyelids hovered and fell and raised themselves again. Often and often had Silvia noticed that shade of gesture on Nellie’s face; but never, so it struck her, had she seen a man do just that. The gesture seemed to imply acquiescence without consent.
“Well, I went anyhow,” he said. “I tapped on his door, and as there was no answer I went in. He was standing in front of that big Italian mirror in—well, in an attitude. He is intending to paint his own portrait, when he has finished that daub of you.”
Silvia leaned forward towards him.
“Oh, don’t talk like that!” she said. “Don’t be ironical—not that quite: don’t feel ironical.”
Peter turned on her a face of mild, injured innocence. “I was telling you the bald facts,” he said.
“The balder the better,” said she.
“I told him I had read my mother’s letter,” he continued, “and that there was news in it which he had better know at once. I got him to sit down, and I got hold of his hand. And then I told him just the fact that she had gone away.”