"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision steadily.
Mrs. Lear coughed.
"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday," went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor one day and let me paint your portrait?"
Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling, indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.
"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"
"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could manage.
Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this wonderful creature.
But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.
"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear? A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush. I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."
There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed: