'Would you let me make my application to Miss Irvine in person, my dear Mrs. Chadwick?' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'Not that I for an instant doubt your good intentions, or am unaware that what I am about to say sounds horribly vain, but I candidly confess I have a great belief in my own powers of persuasion.'
'Such a belief is doubtless merely the result of experience, Mrs. Hamblin, and in accordance with what all the world says of you,' said Mrs. Chadwick half spitefully--for except her honest old husband no one had ever found her particularly fascinating--'and I will take care that you have the opportunity of seeing Eleanor.'
'At once?' asked Mrs. Hamblin. 'May I try at once? I feel full of mesmeric influence to-day.'
'I am sorry that you will not have the opportunity of exhibiting your skill to-day, unless you choose to wait for an hour,' said Mrs. Chadwick coldly, 'for Eleanor is not in the house just now, and I have sent the brougham to fetch her.'
'Not in the house,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin; 'O, I am so grieved!'
'She has been very much engaged for the last few weeks,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'First, in attendance on an old schoolfellow, who required care and attention--which she could not possibly have had but for Eleanor's help--and more recently she has been occupied at the South Kensington Museum.'
'At the South Kensington Museum!' cried Mrs. Hamblin, whose notions of that establishment were confined to an occasional languid stroll through the loan collection, but who had heard of it as a convenient place of meeting for people who wanted accidentally to encounter each other. 'At the South Kensington Museum!' she repeated. 'How very funny! What does she go there for?'
'To study, Mrs. Hamblin,' said Mrs. Chadwick, with virtuous dignity. 'Eleanor has a great idea of independence, and desires to perfect herself in that art of which poor papa was so admirable a professor.'
'Was Mr. Irvine, the great artist, your father?' said Mrs. Hamblin, with well-feigned astonishment--she knew perfectly well all about poor Angus Irvine, to whose assistance she had more than once contributed--'I had no idea of that. And so your sister, who has talent of course, is thinking of following in his footsteps. How noble and courageous of her, and what a reproof to us, who are only fitted to be burdens upon men! But you surely will not permit her to persevere in this idea, my dear Mrs. Chadwick; she is far too pretty and interesting to be doomed to such a life. This is she, is it not?' she added, taking up a coloured photograph which stood upon the table. 'I thought I recognised those lovely eyes and that charming hair, though I had only seen her once; the likeness to you is most remarkable; a girl with a face like that must not be permitted to "wither on a stalk," as some one has said. There is scarcely any position which she might not aspire to if she were seen in society.'
'So I have told her,' said Mrs. Chadwick, delighted at the compliment to herself, 'but it does not seem to be of much use. However, as I said before, I will do my best to induce her to accept your kind invitation.'