"Humph!" he commented ungraciously. "Where did you learn to turn cheap epigrams? Probably it's an echo of something you've read."
He addressed her variously as Miss Epigrams, Lady Blessington, and Madame de Staël as the work went forward, always with profound gravity, until finally, when he saw her color rise to his teasing, he gave his full-lunged laugh and confessed.
"All the same, you're right, Miss Epigrams. That's one reason why I'm still unattached. It's also why I haven't cared to see Craig take the only sure cure. A wife would teach his sister her place, if she had the right metal." He chuckled at the vision his words conjured. "But it would be a battle royal."
It was spring before Jean herself saw Mrs. Van Ostade. She had posed for Atwood frequently after Christmas, but had chanced always to be either with MacGregor or Richter when his sister visited the studio, until the April afternoon when Julie's knock interrupted an overdue illustration which Atwood was toiling mightily to finish. He frowned at the summons and answered it without putting down the maul-stick, palette, and brushes with which his hands were cumbered; but his "You, Julie!" at the door hinted no impatience, nor his returning step aught but infinite leisure as he issued with his dark-eyed, dark-haired, dark-skinned caller from behind the screen.
"Those stairs!" sighed the lady. Then, observing Jean, she subjected her to a drastic ordeal by lorgnon, which, raking her from face to gown,—where the inquisition lingered,—returned with added intensity upon her face.
Hot plowshares could have been no more fiery for poor Jean, who, sufficiently aglow with the knowledge that the dress upon her back was a piece of Mrs. Van Ostade's evening finery abandoned to the uses of the studio, found herself tormented by the certainty that somewhere in her vulnerable past she and this sister of Craig Atwood's had met before.
A sympathetic reflection of her embarrassment lit the man's face.
"This is Miss Fanshaw," he interposed, "herself an artist. You have heard me speak of her, Julie."
The lorgnon dropped and the two women exchanged a bow perceptible to the naked eye.
"I know the face," stated Mrs. Van Ostade, with an impersonal air of classifying scientific phenomena. "Where did I see it?"