"But why? It is so good, so charming, so—so true! You did it for your own amusement, then! But that was very selfish."
For answer Kendal caught up a tube of Indian red, squeezed it on the crusted palette, loaded a brush with it, and dashed it across the sketch. It was a feeble piece of bravado, and he felt it, but he must convince her in some way that the thing was worthless to him.
"Ah," she said, "that is a pity!" and she walked to the door. She must get away, quite away, and quickly, to realize this, thing, and find out exactly what it meant to her. And yet, three steps down the stairs she turned and came back again. John Kendal stood where, she had left him, staring at the sketch on the easel.
"I have come back to thank you," Elfrida said quickly, "for showing me what a fool I made of myself," and she was gone.
An hour later Kendal had not ceased to belabor himself; but the contemplation of the sketch—he had not looked at it for two months—brought him to the conclusion that perhaps, after all, it might have some salutary effect. He found himself so curiously sore about it though, so thoroughly inclined, to brand himself a traitor and a person without obligation, that he went back to Norway the following week—a course which left a number of worthy people in the neighborhood of Bigton, Devonshire, very indignant indeed.
CHAPTER XXII.
"Daddy," Janet said to her father a few days after their return to town; "I've been thinking that we might—that you might—be of use in helping Frida to place something somewhere else than in that eternal picture paper."
"For instance?"
"Oh, in Peterson's, or the London Magazine, or Piccadilly."
It was in the library after dinner, and Lawrence Cardiff was smoking. He took the slender stem of his pipe from his lips and pressed down the tobacco in the bowl with a, caressing thumb, looking appreciatively, as he did it, at the mocking buffoon's face that was carved on it.