“Why do you hesitate?” he asked, pausing at the last button and looking into her face.
“Oh—because—I don’t know!” She was a little embarrassed. “I was afraid I’d spoken as though I meant to ask for the sketch.”
“You didn’t!” laughed Crowdie, softly. “You’re going to have it anyway. I made it for you.”
“I don’t believe that,” answered Katharine, quickly, but smiling. “You’re only trying to help me out of my rudeness. But it’s very generous of you to think of giving me anything, after all that’s happened.”
“Why? Do you mean about the will? Really, Miss Lauderdale, if you think I’m that sort of person—”
He stopped and laughed again, so naturally and easily that she hardly doubted his sincerity. His womanish eyes looked innocently into hers. He held her left wrist in both his hands, just as he had paused in the act of buttoning the glove.
Overhead, Hester’s light footstep was audible in the short silence that followed, as she moved about the room, searching for the sketch, which had evidently not been in the place where she had left it.
“Besides,” added Crowdie, after a short pause, “you’re not your father. And if you were,” he continued, lightly, “that wouldn’t be a reason for being horrid. The law decided it, and I suppose the law was right. Mr. Lauderdale didn’t make the law, and it gave him his rights. Hester and I shall get along just as well on what we’ve always had. I don’t complain. Of course it would be nice to buy Greek islands, and play with marble palaces and Oriental luxury. But after all, I’m a painter. I suppose it’s an assumption, or a boast, or something. But I don’t care—before you—I like painting, and I should always paint, and I should always want to sell my pictures, if I had a hundred millions. What could Hester and I do with five or six hundred thousand a year? That would have been about our share. I shouldn’t feel like myself, if I didn’t earn money by what I do. I suppose you can’t understand that, can you?”
“Oh yes, I can,” answered Katharine, quickly. “I understand it, and I like it in you. It’s because you’re not an amateur that you feel like that.”
“I’m not exactly an amateur,” said Crowdie, with a smile. “As for the sketch, or the picture, if I paint it, they’re yours. You were the old gentleman’s favourite, and it’s right that you should have a portrait of him—that is—if you’ll accept it.”