He was looking at this picture with some intentness when Anne Purcell came in to him, with cross lines about her mouth, and the strained air of a woman whose temper is not at its best when inconsiderate persons make morning calls. She was wearing a faded puce-colored gown, and lace and ribbons that were none too clean, and she looked sallow in the morning sunlight, and restless yet heavy about the eyes.
“Good-morning, Jack.”
She treated him with blunt ceremony, having seen his ears boxed as a boy. John Gore turned and bowed to her, with his head full of other things.
“I was looking at Donna Gloria’s picture,” he said, making the most obvious remark, as a man commonly does on such occasions; “there is a strange likeness there.”
“Ah, yes, Gloria had a temper.”
“Is that Thorn—in the corner of the canvas, where the patch of sunlight lies?”
My lady glanced at him as though she had found him infinitely tiresome on previous visits.
“Thorn? I suppose it is.”
“It lies some miles from the Rye road, does it not—not far from a place called Battle?”
Anne Purcell looked at him with sudden suspiciousness, and, turning aside, sat down on a low couch with her back toward the light. John Gore had always angered her of late with the grim and quiet persistency of a forlorn and ridiculous faith. And possibly this impatience of hers came from the inevitable pain she suffered when gleams of the finer spirit in her broke through the shades of self.