"I might put the same question to you, Agnes, seeing that you have come to live within three miles of my hermitage."
"It is because you are living in what you call your hermitage that I have come," rejoined Agnes, with a slight color deepening her cheeks. "Is it fair to me that you should shut yourself up and play the part of the disappointed lover?"
Lambert, who had been touching up his picture here and there, laid down his palette and brushes with ostentatious care, and faced her doggedly. "I don't understand what you mean," he declared.
"Oh, I think you do; and in the hope that I may induce you, in justice to me, to change your conduct, I have come over."
"I don't think you should have come," he observed in a low voice, and threw himself on the couch with averted eyes.
Lady Agnes colored again. "You are talking nonsense," she said with some sharpness. "There is no harm in my coming to see my cousin."
"We were more than cousins once."
"Exactly, and unfortunately people know that. But you needn't make matters worse by so pointedly keeping away from me."
Lambert looked up quickly. "Do you wish me to see you often?" he asked, and there was a new note in his voice which irritated her.
"Personally I don't, but—"