The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.
"I will come, sir, and—and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening gesture, she turned away.
Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.
"I'm sorry to have treated you to this—scene," he said apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow bridge. "I felt bound to do something for the girl, after she had been wasting all that time outside my gates. Did you notice what a pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the man can be—Crichton, Cecil Crichton, wasn't it?… I never heard the name before. It doesn't sound like a sailor's name."
"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "No … and yet it sounds familiar. Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't Cecil, as far as I remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil Crichton—ah, Cyril Crichton?" he repeated. Then, dismissing the subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, it's no business of mine! Will you give me a light? Thanks!"
CHAPTER VII
At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model—an Italian, with a wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque pose, whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow to sit for him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio servant in the intervals.
"That will do, Cesare," he said, "aspetto persone; besides, you're shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint while you're sneezing. Yes, you're quite right, è un freddo terribile, considering that it's July. Off with you now, and come again at the same time on Friday. Si conservi—that's to say, don't get drunk in the interval; it makes you look such a brute that I can't paint you."
While the model transformed himself from a scantily-attired Roman gladiator into an Italian of the ordinary Saffron Hill description, Lightmark hastily washed his brushes, turned down his shirt sleeves, and donned the becoming velvet painting-jacket, which Mrs. Dollond had so much admired.
"I hope they won't notice Cesare's pipe," he said anxiously. "Even though he doesn't smoke here, it always seems to hang about. Perhaps I had better open the window and burn a pastille. And now, are we prepared to receive Philistia? Yes, I don't think the place looks bad, and—but perhaps Mrs. Sylvester mightn't like the gladiator. He certainly is deucedly anatomical at present. I'll go and leave him in Copal's studio, and then I can borrow his tea-things at the same time."