‘I told you so,’ said Charles.
‘Shall I take down the curtain?’ said the Uncle. And the three C.’s said ‘Yes!’
He pulled at the green folds, and the curtain and drooping soft flowers of yesterday fell in a mingled heap on the floor. And from the frame, now disclosed, the lady’s lips almost smiled on them as her beautiful eyes gazed down on them with a new meaning.
‘But she’ll never speak to us again,’ said Caroline, almost in tears.
‘Or sing to us,’ said Charlotte, not very steadily.
‘Or tell us to count twenty-seven slowly,’ said Charles, sniffing a very little.
‘But it’s something, isn’t it,’ said the Uncle, ‘to have seen her, even if only for once?’
You will understand that anything Mrs. Wilmington might say was powerless to break the charm of so wonderful an adventure. Hollow tales she told of the portrait’s having been borrowed for a show of pictures of celebrities who had lived in the neighbourhood, and of the picture being brought back very late the night before, after the servants had gone to bed; also of a gentleman who told her that Mr. Alphabet sent his love; also of a lady, a great actress from London, who had taken part in the Pageant which was one of the features of Lord Andore’s coming-of-age party—‘a very nice lady she was, too, dressed up to look the part of the picture, and put down as Dame Eleanour in the programme, which I can show you printed in silver on satin paper.’