“The Rector wishes me to paint his daughter’s portrait.”
“Not Cynthia’s?”
“No, that of his daughter Julia.”
“Why, Magnus,” said Artingale, smiling to himself and laying his hand upon his friend’s arm, “could you wish for a greater pleasure?”
Magnus looked at him so fixedly for a few moments that Artingale felt that he must be suspected; but it was not so, the artist only shook his head, and there was a bitter look in his face, as he spoke again.
“Pleasure!” he said; “how can it be a pleasure to me? Harry, my boy, how can you be so thoughtless. Do you think I could be guilty of so dishonourable an act?”
“Dishonourable?”
“Yes,” cried Magnus passionately. “Should I not go there on false pretences to try and win that poor girl from the man to whom she is engaged?”
“But, my dear fellow, it is a folly of her father’s invention; she detests this Perry-Morton, as every right-thinking, matter-of-fact girl would. Why, the fellow dances attendance upon every woman of fashion, and deserves to be encountered with any weapon one could seize. Tell me, do you think it right that she should marry such a man?”
“No: certainly not. No more right than that she should be deluded into marrying another man she did not love.”