This high-flown speech, which Gaiters copied from some of his master's, caused the little housemaid to think he was mad or tipsy, and she was about to close the door with some precipitation, when Mrs. Fubsby appeared, and, on inquiring for Miss Ellinor Wellwood, he was informed she was at home.
The dealer had promptly informed Ellinor that a companion was wanted for her landscape, and while intent among the many in her portfolio, she was not surprised when Mrs. Fubsby announced a gentleman visitor, who knew her face instantly, though she failed to recognise the bearer of many gifts of flowers and game when at Birkwoodbrae.
With all his vulgar assurance, the valet felt himself for a little time daunted or abashed by the presence and bearing of Ellinor, to whom with some hesitation he told the object of his visit—he had bought her picture, and a friend of his wished one precisely like it; and while he was speaking, Jack, the terrier, with a dog's strange instincts, maintained a most unpleasant snarling under the sofa, and Gaiters, remembering the episode of his master, felt correspondingly uneasy. For 'though love be proverbially blind, hatred has a sharp sight,' and so had Jack, who showed his white glittering teeth from time to time. 'Human beings have their instinctive likes and dislikes, and why not dogs?' asks a writer. 'We cannot tell what expression of countenance they consider malevolent, or menacing, or murderous; but certain it is that they often exhibit unaccountable antipathy to some individual, while most affectionate and amicable towards all the rest of the world.'
So Jack's antipathy to Sleath now extended to his emissary Gaiters.
The landscape was soon agreed about—money was no object to the visitor, who quickly selected a subject from a rough sketch, which Ellinor perceived with some surprise he held upside-down, a curious fancy in a connoisseur and patron of art, and, in the interests of his knavish master, Gaiters, anxious to learn the entire carte du pays, said,
'Do you live here alone, Miss Wellwood?'
'I am not Miss Wellwood—my sister is,' replied Ellinor, with a little hauteur of manner.
'Is she, too, an artist?'
'No.'
'And you live together—so sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing her.'