He wondered why she had given him the picture, and it was not until he had got half-way home that it occurred to him to think that perhaps she liked the thought that her picture, in all her brilliant beauty, should lie about the house where Southerley was.
He did not quite know whether this idea of his did the lady injustice; but he decided that, innocent as this little bit of coquetry might be, he would not risk fanning a hopeless flame in his friend’s breast.
There was a sort of suspicion, however, in the faces of both Repton and Southerley when he got home and found them playing cribbage by the fire. They wanted to know where he had been, and said rude things when he wouldn’t tell them. And then, as luck would have it, Southerley pounced into his bedroom when he had retired for the night, and found Signora Beata’s portrait stuck in his looking-glass, in front of which he was taking off his collar.
Southerley made for the portrait in a rage.
“Who’s this?” roared he, as he seized the photograph, which Bayre in vain tried to intercept.
The owner of the picture took the bull by the horns.
“It’s my aunt,” shouted he, as he made a clutch at it.
“Aunt be blowed! It’s not. It’s—it’s—”
“It’s the wife of my uncle and namesake, old Bartlett Bayre of Creux, and the mother of the child we brought over from St Luke’s a few weeks ago,” said Bayre, deliberately.
The two young men looked each other straight in the face for a few moments.