He came over to her hastily. "Oh! no one you know; and it isn't really worth looking at. A wretched caricature--I did not know it was there."
Something in his voice roused the amused malice which always lurked behind Mrs. Vane's treatment of Paul's foibles.
"I disagree with you; look, Miss Carmichael! Don't you think that quite the best thing we have seen of Captain Macleod's doing?"
"It is a lovely face," said the girl, "and it reminds me of someone----" Then she looked up in sudden interest. "Surely it is Paul--little Paul, I mean, Peggy Duncan's grandson; perhaps----" She stopped abruptly, remembering the big Paul's confession, and blushed, she scarcely knew why. Then, feeling vexed with herself for doing so, put down the sketch, and taking up another, made some trivial remark about its being very pretty. But Mrs. Vane had not done with the sketch. "That Highland type of face----" she began.
"There is no need to theorise over the likeness in this case," interrupted Paul, seeing through her, as he nearly always did. "It was little Paul's mother; and as I think I told you once, Miss Carmichael, the most beautiful woman I ever saw. That is why I call it a caricature, Mrs. Vane."
The anger in his voice was not to be mistaken, and Marjory, as he moved away to resume his tête-a-tête with Alice Woodward, was left with an uncomfortable feeling that she had somehow betrayed a secret, though her common, sense resented the imputation. But Mrs. Vane looked after his retreating figure with one of her fine smiles. So the memory of this particular most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world--there must have been a good many of them in Paul Macleod's life--was not pleasant to him. Wherefore? The question came quite idly, and passed from her mind without an answer. Marjory, on the other hand, took hers--as to whether she was to blame or not--seriously to heart. So much so, that when she had speech with Paul alone, which occurred naturally enough when he brought her a cup of tea, as she sate stitching away for dear life at some ridiculous theatrical property near the window, so as to get the full advantage of the waning light, she reverted to the subject at once.
"Don't," he interrupted hurriedly, almost before she had begun. "Please don't; I would so much rather you said nothing more about it."
"But I don't understand."
"Thank heaven you don't," he replied.
"Why should you say that?" she cried reproachfully. "I cannot see why I should not, if I can. I am not a fool----"