"They meant the whole show. Beginning with Barty's selling to my tenants, and then your father's people making trouble, and the Carmodys burning the covert, and all the rest of it! They're quite right! It's all my rotten fault! Christian, I'm going back to France! I can't face you after what I've brought on you!"
In the bad moments of life, when the bare and shivering soul stands defenceless, waiting for evil tidings, or nerving itself to endure condolence, Christian had ever a gentle touch; and she knew too, when it comforted wrong-doers to be laughed at.
"Oh, Larry! And you pretended you wanted to paint my picture!" she said, looking at his miserable face with eyes that shone as the Pool of Siloam might have shone after the Angel had troubled it; there were tears in them, but there was healing, too.
Larry took her hand and held it tight.
"You don't mean it—how could you bear to look at me?"
"But I shan't look at you! You will have to look at me—that is, if you can bear it! You must try and brace yourself to the effort!"
This, it may be admitted, was provocation on Christian's part, but, as she told herself afterwards, desperate measures were necessary, or they would both have burst into tears.
The resolution to return to France, announced, as has been set forth, by Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, was not adhered to. In the first place, there was Barty Mangan and the various affairs that he represented; in the second place, there was the portrait; in the third place—which might as well, if not better, have come first—the resolve had expired, like the flame of a damp match, in the effort that gave it birth.
Aunt Freddy welcomed the suggestion of the portrait with enthusiasm. She had had four years of peace, "careing" Coppinger's Court for the reigning Coppinger; to "care" the reigning Coppinger himself, was, she felt, a far less peaceful undertaking. She agreed entirely with the well-worn adage relative to idle hands, and had no illusions as to her own capacity to offer alternative attractions.