"I don't know what you mean," said the elder sister, sharply.
"Oh, don't you! Poor, innocent thing! Well, I am not going to quarrel with you this time, for at last you are showing some sense. How you ever could have thought of Mr. Howson, or Mr. Brook, or you know whom—I never could imagine; but here is some one now whom people have heard of—some one with fame like yourself—who will understand you. Oh Gerty, hasn't he lovely eyes?"
"Like a gazelle," said the other. "You know what Mr. —— said—that he never met the appealing look of Mr. Lemuel's eyes without feeling in his pockets for a biscuit."
"He wouldn't say anything like that about you, Gerty," Carry said reproachfully.
"Who wouldn't?"
"Mr. Lemuel."
"Oh, Carry, don't you understand that I am so glad to be allowed to talk nonsense? I have been all strung up lately—like the string of a violin. Everything au grand serieux I want to be idle, and to chat, and to talk nonsense. Where did you get that bunch of stephanotis?"
"Mr. Lemuel brought it last evening. He knew you were coming home to-day. Oh Gerty, do you know I have seen your portrait, though it isn't finished yet; and you look—you look like an inspired prophetess. I never saw anything so lovely!"
"Indeed!" said Miss White, with a smile; but she was pleased.
"When the public see that, they will know what you are really like, Gerty—instead of buying your photograph in a shop from a collection of ballet-dancers and circus women. That is where you ought to be—in the Royal Academy: not in a shop-window with any mountebank. Oh, Gerty, do you know who is your latest rival in the stationers' windows? The woman who dresses herself as a mermaid and swims in a transparent tank, below water—Fin-fin they call her. I suppose you have not been reading the newspapers?"