"Well, I hope he gave you five thousand for it, too," said Lady Crowborough.
Charles beamed at her: she had finished her second cup of positively oily tea, and was smoking a cigarette with an expression of extreme satisfaction.
"He did more for me than that, Lady Crowborough," he said, "he gave me a chance, a start. Then he came to see my studio, and gave me the commission to paint this copy. And then——"
Charles' simple soul found it hard to be silent, but he remembered Craddock's parting admonition.
"And then, my dear?" asked Lady Crowborough.
"Then he's made me feel he believes in me," he said. "That's a lot, you know, when nobody has ever cared two straws before. By Jove, yes, I owe him everything."
Certainly her new flirt was a charming young fellow, and Lady Crowborough saw that Joyce approved no less than she. She felt he was probably extremely unwise and inexperienced, and would have bet her veil, and gone back veilless, the prey of the freckling sun, that Craddock had made some shrewd bargain of his own. It was now time for her flirt to have an innings with Joyce. She was prepared to cast all the duties of a chaperon to the winds, and inconvenience herself as well in order to secure this.
"Well, I've enjoyed my tea and my cigarette," she said, "and all I've not enjoyed is Joyce's punt. I shouldn't wonder if it leaked, and the gnats on the river were something awful. They get underneath my veil and tickle my nose, and I shall walk home across the fields, and leave you to bring the punt back, my dear. And if you've got a spark of good feeling, Joyce, you'll help Mr. Lathom wash up our tea things first."
And this wicked old lady marched off without another word.
Joyce and Charles were left alone, looking exactly like a young god and goddess meeting without intention or scheme of their own, in some green-herbaged riverside in the morning of the world. They did the obvious instinctive thing and laughed.