Vard transfixed his abject henchman.
“I have never yet taken the back way,” he enunciated; and, with a gesture matching the words, he turned to me and bowed.
“I regret the disturbance”—and he walked to the door. His daughter was at his side, alert, transfigured.
“Stay here, my dear.”
“Never!”
They measured each other an instant; then he drew her arm in his. She flung back one look at me—a paean of victory—and they passed out with Cornley at their heels.
I wish I’d finished the face then; I believe I could have caught something of the look she had tried to make me see in him. Unluckily I was too excited to work that day or the next, and within the week the whole business came out. If the indictment wasn’t a put-up job—and on that I believe there were two opinions—all that followed was. You remember the farcical trial, the packed jury, the compliant judge, the triumphant acquittal?... It’s a spectacle that always carries conviction to the voter: Vard was never more popular than after his “exoneration”...
I didn’t see Miss Vard for weeks. It was she who came to me at length; came to the studio alone, one afternoon at dusk. She had—what shall I say?—a veiled manner; as though she had dropped a fine gauze between us. I waited for her to speak.
She glanced about the room, admiring a hawthorn vase I had picked up at auction. Then, after a pause, she said:
“You haven’t finished the picture?”