He looked at her keenly, but said more kindly, "Here, my dear, take this wine"; and he poured out a glass of old port.
She drank it eagerly, for she felt she must have something that would give her life, warmth, and courage. In a way she could not understand, her heart sank within her.
But she saw her father was watching her, and knew she must act skillfully to deceive him. Rallied and strengthened by the generous wine, her resolute will was soon on its throne again, and Mr. Ludolph with all his keen insight was no match for her. In a matter-of-fact tone she said:
"I do not see how we have worked Mr. Fleet to death. Does he charge anything of the kind?7'
"Oh, no! but he too seems possessed with the idea of becoming an artist. That drunken old Bruder, whom he appears to have reformed, was giving him lessons, and after working all day he would study much of the night and paint as soon as the light permitted in the morning. He might have made something if he had had a judicious friend to guide him" ("And such you might have been," whispered her conscience), "but now he drops away like untimely fruit."
"It is a pity," said she, coolly, and changed the subject, as if she had dismissed it from her mind.
Mr. Ludolph believed that Dennis was no more to his daughter than a useful clerk.
The next morning Christine rose pale and listless.
Her father said, "I will arrange my business so that we can go off on a trip in a few days."
When left alone she sat down at her easel and tried to restore the expression that had so delighted her on the preceding day. But she could not. Indeed she was greatly vexed to find that her tendency was to paint his stern and scornful look, which had made a deeper impression on her mind than any she had even seen on his face, because so unexpected and novel. She became irritated with herself, and cried, fiercely: "Shame on your weakness! You are unworthy of your blood and ancestry. I will reproduce that face as it was before he so insolently destroyed it;" and she bent over her easel with an expression not at all in harmony with her work. Unconsciously she made a strange contrast, with her severe, hard face and compressed lips, to the look of love and pleading she sought to paint. For several days she wrought with resolute purpose, but found that her inspiration was gone.