CHAPTER X
BELLA’S CHAMPION
It was early in the afternoon when Lisle arrived at Millicent’s house and, after a glance at its quaint exterior, was ushered into her drawing-room. There he sat down and looked about while he waited. The salient tones of its decoration were white and aqueous blue, and the effect struck him as pleasantly chaste and cool. Among the rather mixed ornaments were a couple of marble statuettes, the figures airily poised and very finely wrought. Next, he noticed some daintily carved objects in ivory, and a picture in water-color of a wide, gray stretch of moor with distance and solitude skilfully conveyed. He had risen to examine it when Millicent entered.
“I’m glad you came, though, as you’re used to the life of the woods and rivers, I’m a little diffident about showing you my sketches,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve kept you waiting.”
Lisle smiled and she liked the candidly humorous gleam in his eyes.
“Nasmyth warned me that I was early—or rather he said that if I were going to visit anybody else I would have been too soon. I’d better confess, however, that I’ve been making a good use of the time. Things of this kind”—he indicated the statuettes—“are almost new to me. They strike me as unusually fine.”
“Yes,” she answered, realizing that he had an artistic eye, “they are beautiful—and one sees so many that are not. George brought them from Italy for me. This”—she moved toward a representation in ivory of a Mogul gateway—“is of course a different style, but it’s remarkable in its patient elaboration of detail. The mosque’s not so fine. Nasmyth sent me the pair from India; he once made a trip to the fringe of the Himalayas.”
Lisle examined the object carefully, and she waited with some interest for his comment.