The ingenious Charles looked mightily surprised.
"Oh, that?" he said, following her glance. "That's only a little water-colour sketch I did of the head of the Reynolds picture. But it is like Miss Wroughton, isn't it?"
It was indeed: so for that matter was the Reynolds.
Lady Crowborough was a little disappointed that Joyce hadn't been giving clandestine sittings, but she knew as well as Charles himself that he had executed this admirable little sketch with Joyce, so to speak, at his finger-tip, and not her great-great-grandmother, and her new flirt rose higher than ever in her estimation.
"And when will you have finished your copying?" she asked.
Here again Charles did not fail.
"I can't possibly tell," he said. "When I came down I imagined it would take a week or ten days, if I worked very hard. But I see how utterly impossible it will be to do it in anything like that time. But it's lovely work. I don't care how long it takes."
"Bless me, how sick and tired you'll get of it," said she.
"Not if you'll come and have tea with me, Lady Crowborough," said this plausible young man.
Lady Crowborough grinned all over: she knew just how much this was worth, but she liked it being said.