Ida’s face did not soften. The man was her lover, for, though he had not declared himself, she was quite aware of that, and she was his partisan and very jealous of his credit. It was difficult to forgive those who had injured him, and these people in England had shown him scant consideration, and had spoken of him slightingly to her, a stranger. He noticed her expression and changed the subject.
“I have fancied now and then that you must have said something remarkably in my favor that day at Scarthwaite,” he said. “I never quite understood what brought up the subject, but Julia once referred to a picture.”
Ida laughed softly.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t very tactful, and I shouldn’t be astonished if your people still regard me as a partly-civilized Colonial. Anyway, there was a picture—a rather striking one. Do you remember Arabella’s’ making a sketch of you with the ax?”
“I certainly do. She wasn’t complimentary in some of her remarks. She called me wooden. But the picture?”
“Would you like to see it before you go?”
Weston glanced at her sharply, and she nodded, while a faint trace of color crept into her face.
“Yes,” she said. “I have it here. I made Arabella give it to me.”
She saw the man set his lips, for it seemed scarcely probable to him that a young woman who begged for the picture of a man would do so merely because she desired to possess it as a work of art. Besides, he felt, and in this he was to some extent correct, that she had intended the admission to be provocative. He was, however, a man with a simple code which forbade his making any attempt to claim this woman’s love while it was possible that in a few months he might once more become a wandering outcast. He sat still for a moment or two, and it seemed to Ida, who watched him quietly, that he had worn much the same look when he stood beside the helpless Grenfell, gripping the big ax. This was really the fact, though he now entered upon a sterner struggle than he had been ready to engage in then. Once more he was endeavoring to do what it seemed to him right.
“Miss Kinnaird would have been better employed if she had painted the big snow peak with the lake at its feet,” he said at length.