Leslie's aid had been solicited by both Sara and the painter in the final effort to overcome the girl's objections. He was rather bored about it, but added his voice to the general clamour. With half an eye one could see that he did not relish the idea of Hetty posing for days to the handsome, agreeable painter. Moreover, it meant that Booth, who could afford to gratify his own whims, would be obliged to spend a month or more in the neighbourhood, so that he could devote himself almost entirely to the consummation of this particular undertaking. Moreover, it meant that Vivian's portrait was to be temporarily disregarded.
Sara Wrandall was quick to recognise the first symptoms of jealousy on the part of her brother-in-law. She had known him for years. In that time she had been witness to a dozen of his encounters in the lists of love, or what he chose to designate as love, and had seen him emerge from each with an unscarred heart and a smiling visage. Never before had he shown the slightest sign of jealousy, even when the affair was at its rosiest. The excellent ego which mastered him would not permit him to forget himself so far as to consider any one else worthy of a feeling of jealousy. But now he was flying an alien flag. He was turning against himself and his smug convictions. He was at least annoyed, if not jealous. Doubtless he was surprised at himself; perhaps he wondered what had come over him.
Sara noted these signs of self-abasement (it could be nothing else where a Wrandall was concerned), and smiled inwardly. The new idol of the Wrandalls was in love, selfishly, insufferably in love as things went with all the Wrandalls. They hated selfishly, and so they loved. Her husband had been their king. But their king was dead, long live the king! Leslie had put on the family crown,—a little jauntily, perhaps,—cocked over the eye a bit, so to speak—but it was there just the same, annoyingly plain to view.
Sara had tried to like him. He had been her friend, the only one she could claim among them all. And yet, beneath his genial allegiance, she could detect the air of condescension, the bland attitude of a superior who defends another's cause for the reason that it gratifies Nero. She experienced a thrill of malicious joy in contemplating the fall of Nero. He would bring down his house about his head, and there would be no Rome to pay the fiddler.
In the train that Tuesday morning, Booth elected to chaff his friend on the progress of his campaign. They were seated opposite to each other in the almost empty parlour car.
"Buck up, old chap," he counselled scoffingly. "Don't look so disconsolate. You're coming out again at the end of the week."
Leslie had been singularly reticent for a matter of ten miles or more after leaving the little station behind. His attention seemed to be engaged strictly in the study of objects beyond the car window.
"What's that?" he demanded curtly.
"I say you're lucky enough to be asked again for the end of the—"
"I've got a standing invitation, if that's what you mean. Sara gives me a meal ticket, as it were. Nothing extraordinary in my going out whenever I like, is there?" His manner was a trifle offish.