"Seeing is believing," said Mrs. Gaunt, gayly, and in a moment she was at the priest's mirror, and inspected her eyes minutely, cocking her head this way and that. She ended by shaking it, and saying, "No. He has flattered them prodigiously."
"Not a jot," said Betty. "If you could see yourself in chapel, you do turn 'em up just so, and the white shows all round." Then she tapped the picture with her finger: "O them eyes! they were never made for the good of his soul,—poor simple man!"
Betty said this with sudden gravity: and now Mrs. Gaunt began to feel very awkward. "Mr. Gaunt would give fifty pounds for this," said she, to gain time: and, while she uttered that sentence, she whipped on her armor.
"I'll tell you what I think," said she, calmly, "he wished to paint a Madonna; and he must take some woman's face to aid his fancy. All the painters are driven to that. So he just took the best that came to hand, and that is not saying much, for this is a rare ill-favored parish: and he has made an angel of her, a very angel. There, hide Me away again, or I shall long for Me—to show to my husband. I must be going; I wouldn't be caught here now for a pension."
"Well, if ye must," said Betty; "but when will ye come again?" (She hadn't got the petticoat yet.)
"Humph!" said Mrs. Gaunt, "I have done all I can for him; and perhaps more than I ought. But there's nothing to hinder you from coming to me. I'll be as good as my word; and I have an old Paduasoy, besides, you can perhaps do something with it."
"You are very good, dame," said Betty, courtesying.
Mrs. Gaunt then hurried away, and Betty looked after her very expressively, and shook her head. She had a female instinct that some mischief or other was brewing.
Mrs. Gaunt went home in a revery.
At the gate she found her husband, and asked him to take a turn in the garden with her.