The portrait of Lady Wentworth progressed but slowly. Sacha knew his own business very well.
“You are so difficult to paint,” he told Christina frequently, in those days when he first took up his abode at Sunstead, while grief reigned in his sister’s home.
“I always think that a doubtful compliment,” Christina said, languidly.
Sacha would have been sharply annoyed and surprised could he have known all that was passing in his hostess’ mind, and how little real satisfaction his presence gave her.
He felt it necessary to explain his implied compliment.
“One can paint ordinary people easily enough,” he told her.
Christina accepted this compliment in the spirit in which it was offered, and so matters passed well between them.
Nevertheless, these days that Sacha spent so comfortably were none too pleasant to Christina. She had heard of her brother’s visit to the Ambletons with a faint degree of irritation, and naturally enough imagined this to be a step on Grace’s part to annoy her, or to pay her back in her own coin. For, however indifferent Christina was in reality to her family, she did not intend or desire to let the whole world know how matters stood. More particularly she did not wish the world of Dynechester to know how poor was the estate of her mother and Polly and Harold.
Harold’s visit, however vexatious as it was to herself, could be explained, since Sacha told her that the boy was about to be trained to his brother’s profession; thus, had questions been asked, there was a satisfactory answer to them. Nevertheless, it had angered Christina to know that there was this friendship between those she called her enemies and her family.
Once or twice she had driven past Valentine and Harold, and she had bit her lip sharply as her eyes had met the man’s steady, contemptuous gaze.