But it was a visitor, unfortunately. In a few minutes Mollie came in, studiously perusing a card she held in her hand.
“Ralph,” she proclaimed, coming forward slowly. “Ralph Gowan. It's Lady Augusta's gentleman, Dolly, and he wants to see you.”
Dolly took the card and looked at it, giving her shoulders a tiny shrug of surprise.
“He has not waited long,” she said; “and it is rather inconvenient, but it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have to run up-stairs and present him to Phil.”
She untied her apron, drew down her sleeves, settled the bit of ribbon at her throat, and in three minutes opened the parlor door and greeted her visitor, looking quite as much in the right place as she had done the night before in the white merino.
“I am very glad to see you,” she said, shaking hands with him, “and I am sure Phil will be, too. He is always glad to see people, and just now you will be doubly welcome, because he has a new picture to talk about. Will you come into the studio, or shall I bring him here? I think it had better be the studio at once, because you will be sure to drift there in the end,—visitors always do.”
“The studio let it be, if you please,” answered Gowan, wondering, just as he had done the night before, at the indescribable something in her manner which was so novel because it was so utterly free from any suggestion of affectation. It would have been a difficult matter to tell her that he had not come for any other reason than to see herself again, and yet this really was the case.
But his rather fanciful taste found Phil a novelty also when she led him into the studio, and presented him to that young man, who was lying upon a couch with a cigar in his mouth.
Phil had something of the same cool friendliness of deportment, and, being used to the unexpected advent of guests at all hours, was quite ready to welcome him. He had the same faculty for making noticeable speeches, too, and was amiable, though languid and débonnaire, and by no means prone to ceremony. In ten minutes after he had entered the room Ralph Gowan understood, as by magic, that, little as the world was to these people, they had, in their Bohemian fashion, learned through sheer tact to comprehend and tolerate its weaknesses. He examined the pictures on the walls and in the folios, and now and then found himself roused into something more than ordinary admiration. But he was disappointed in one thing. He failed in accomplishing the object of his visit.
After she had seen that Phil and the paintings occupied his attention to some extent, Dolly left them.