“No, thank you, Lady Strange,” said the boy, with admirable coolness, “I shall stick to the ideal for my picture, I will work hard on it. And when it is finished, will you have it, Strange?”
“Will I? The deuce I will! It would be a magnificent present without another stroke of work in it.”
“What will you call it, Humphrey?” asked his wife.
“I shall call it ‘The Incognita’.”
“Mr. Brydon, tea is getting cold all this time, and I am so thirsty,” she said with serene imperiousness, turning from the sketches and going over to the little table. “I hope you are as good at making tea as you are at making brides,” she went on mockingly. “Sugar? Yes, please, two lumps, and—galette? How delicious! I do like French cake.”
“Lady Strange, you said you would sit to me as a bride, did you mean it?”
“I did,” she said amusedly.
The ungainly-looking boy with his great saving clauses of eyes and his queer red blushes and open admiration of herself, gave her a sensation of interest.
“Would you sit just once in that dress—or any other you like? You don’t know how good of you it would be.”
“Is it such a boon then when I require such an amount of idealization?”