The following days were largely occupied in getting clothes, and though Regina begged him not to trouble about these, he came with her and superintended all the purchases.
She did not seem to wish to have anything sent her from the Rectory, and she never inquired what Everest had written to her father, nor what the reply had been. For her, apparently, her home and all its inmates had ceased to exist.
These days spent in town, empty though it was, and rather dusty and disagreeable at that time of year, were full of a wonderful delight for them both. Everest was gifted with a marvellously good temper, the result of his perfect health and strength. Nothing ever seemed to ruffle or disturb him. He was always ready to laugh at those thousand little contretemps that occur in life from day to day—he never blamed her for them, even when she deserved it. He was always satisfied with the clothes she chose and wore; according to him, she was always dressed in the right things, and looked sweet in them. He sympathised with her in her smallest troubles. If she had an ache, or pain, or a cut finger it was a serious matter to him; and in these days of intimate companionship with him Regina grew to know what the absolute idolatry of another meant. She had come to him with it in her heart, as so many women come to their lovers and husbands with that precious gift, but in nearly every case the intense egoism, the want of all consideration, the ungracious ill-humour, the constant anger over petty details that men usually display in daily life, completely destroy it, leaving the woman at last weary and indifferent. Everest's gay, sunny disposition was very like Regina's own, and to be with him, after living in the depressing atmosphere of the Rectory, made her feel as a bird might feel set free in a glad, green wood, full of summer light, after long imprisonment in a cellar. Almost breaking with its own delight, her heart soared upwards in love's bright and sunny sky.
The picture had been in the window of the Bond Street shop a few days when late one afternoon a middle-aged man entered, and nodding to the proprietor took a chair by the counter.
"I see you've found a new genius, Jim," he said, "and you are doing your best to boom it, by putting on that ridiculous price; but you know it's too much; you won't get it!"
"Well, sir, it's the lady's own price. I am selling it for her," answered the man deferentially, for his visitor was a constant customer; a good judge of painting, and with a purse as sound as his judgment.
"Oh, it's a lady, is it? So much the better. A pretty one?"
"I shouldn't like to say so very pretty, but tall and attractive, and so bright it's just like sunshine to see her come in."
"And how old?"
"Oh, about eighteen or nineteen I should say."