‘Pray let us leave the subject,’ she said.
‘No, I must ask you as a favour to hear me. Frau Goldmark has a way of putting the cart before the horse sometimes, which, if innocent, is still annoying. She told you that I had said to Herr Lohe—something which, if I had said it, under the circumstances, would have been the height of impertinence, though the poor little woman seems to imagine that it was a charming compliment.’
‘Well, and did you not say it?’ she asked, still in the same unapproachable manner.
‘Can you for a moment suspect me of it? I observed to Herr Lohe that it was a charming picture, upon which he threw up his hands, exclaiming, “ Ach! mein Herr, it was always charming, but since one has seen Miss Ford in it, it is à ravir.”’
Sara smiled involuntarily. Herr Lohe was a well-known character in the Elberthal artist world. The words and the manner were so exactly his, that she could no longer have even a shade of doubt on the matter.
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, all the stiffness melting suddenly from her attitude and expression, ‘for ever listening to such a story. It took me by surprise.’
‘Now you look less terrible, and more human,’ he said, laughing; ‘less like those “snows so pure, those peaks so high,” to which the poet said he lifted “a hopeless eye.”’
‘You are laughing at me,’ said Sara, laughing in her turn. ‘I felt insulted, I confess. What a tiresome, mischievous little woman that is!’
‘Very. But,’ he added earnestly, and in a low voice, ‘you were not insulted yesterday, when I said some rather strong things to you, the reverse of complimentary, and yet now——’
‘That was quite different,’ she replied, her cheek flushing again. ‘And you know it, Herr Falkenberg; but you wish to torment me because you think I am exaggerated in everything.’