Inside the palm-house I could see Charmion’s grey figure reclining in a wicker chair, her face ivory-white against the cushions. She was waving her fan to and fro, and listening with apparent attention to the conversation of her companions. I guessed how little she would hear; how bitter must be the dread at her heart; how endlessly, interminably long the moments must seem.
“Miss Wastneys, would you care to see the picture we were talking about at dinner?”
It was Mr Maplestone’s voice. I looked up and saw him standing by my side, and rose at once, thankful for any movement which would pass the time. We left the room together, walked to the end of the long corridor, and drew up before the picture of an uninteresting old man with several chins, and the small, steel-blue eyes which seem a family inheritance. This was a celebrated Romney, which had been the subject of a protracted law-suit between different branches of the family, which had cost the losing party over a thousand pounds. I thought, but did not say, that I would have been obliged to anyone who would have taken him away, free, gratis, for nothing, rather than that he should hang on my walls. Spoken comment, under the circumstances, was a little difficult and halting!
“This is the Romney.”
“Oh yes.”
“My grandfather.”
“I see. Yes. How interesting.”
He laughed—a short, derisive bark.
“That’s the last thing you can call it! A more uninteresting production I never beheld. What right had he to waste good canvas? That is one point in which we do show more common sense than our ancestors. We do not consider it necessary to inflict our portraits on posterity.”
“No. We don’t. At least—”