The click of a lamp being turned on startled them. Mrs. Weyman, home from her Shakespeare Club meeting in Tarrytown, had come into the room unnoticed. Enderly sprang to his feet and in a second was slipping his hostess’ coat from her shoulders, taking her gloves. “We didn’t hear you,” he said needlessly and added, “We were discussing the expected guest. Anne and I are wondering what she’ll be like.” He carried the coat, hat and gloves swiftly out to the hall, deposited them in good order there on a chair, and came back. Mrs. Weyman had sat down beside her daughter and was leaning forward, holding chilled hands to the blaze, rubbing them slightly. They were long, essentially aristocratic hands, Enderly noted, like Anne’s.
Mrs. Weyman glanced up. “Hugh has invited her to visit us because of his friendship for her father,” she explained. “She was only a little girl when he knew her. We shall have to wait to see what she is like now.”
“Clare was an artist, wasn’t he? Didn’t Glenn tell me?”
“He called himself one. But no one has ever heard of him. Or have you, perhaps?” There was a sudden access of hope in Mrs. Weyman’s modulated voice.
But Enderly shook his head. “Not I. But that doesn’t signify. What I don’t know about art—”
Mrs. Weyman stopped him. “You’d have at least heard the name. No. Hugh’s the only one who ever did hear about this particular artist, I suspect. But they were great friends. And it’s that that matters.”
“Of course. But I didn’t realize that Hugh cared so much about art, that he was interested—”
Anne laughed, a laugh throaty and hesitant as her speaking voice. “He isn’t,” she exclaimed, snatching Enderly’s attention from her mother. “Joan Nevin squashed all that promptly on its first appearance. You see, Joan does know a thing or two about art, and artists too. They swarm at her house, Holly, and she’s a patroness of exhibitions and a godmother in general to the aspiring. She knows all the big painters, the important fellows, here and abroad, and she has a collection of her own that’s A1,—but you know all about her, of course. Hugh’s always been in love with her. His devotion is almost as famous as her private collection. So when, all on his own, he discovered this artist in Bermuda, he proudly bought and lugged home one of his paintings to her. But she—”
Mrs. Weyman touched her daughter’s arm warningly. This was an Anne who distressed and embarrassed her. But Enderly, for the minute too genuinely interested to be tactful, said, “Oh! So Mrs. Nevin has a painting by this unheard-of artist. I’d like to see it.”
“No, Mrs. Nevin hasn’t it,” Mrs. Weyman corrected him, her fingers by now firmly pressing Anne’s arm. “I don’t know how Anne knows that Hugh even intended it as a present for her. He never said so. He merely got her over here to see it, as I remember, and she wasn’t very much impressed.”