If it was merely kindness, and she was the object of charity, it was all right; she could accept it on those terms. She even tempted him to patronize her, but when he ventured upon something elderly and paternal in his monitions, she resented it so fiercely that she was astonished and ashamed. There was an inconsistency in it all that was perplexing, but not so perplexing as to spoil the pleasure of it.
There were not sittings every day, now; Ludlow came once or twice a week, and criticised her work; sometimes he struck off a sketch himself, in illustration of a point, and these sketches were now so unlike Cornelia, and so wholly like Charmian, that when he left them for her guidance, she studied them with a remote ache in her heart. "Never mind," Charmian consoled her once, "he just does it on purpose."
"Does what?" Cornelia demanded awfully.
"Oh, nothing!"
One of the sketches he fancied so much that he began to carry it forward. He worked at it whenever he came, and under his hand it grew an idealized Charmian, in which her fantastic quality expressed itself as high imagination, and her formless generosity as a wise and noble magnanimity.
She made fun of it when they were alone, but Cornelia could see that she was secretly proud of having inspired it, and that she did not really care for the constant portrait which Cornelia had been faithfully finishing up, while Ludlow changed and experimented, though Charmian praised her to his disadvantage.
One day he said he had carried his picture as far as he could, and he should let it go at that. It seemed an end of their pleasant days together; the two girls agreed that now there could be no further excuse for their keeping on, and Cornelia wondered how she could let him know that she understood. That evening he came to call on her at Mrs. Montgomery's, and before he sat down he began to say: "I want to ask your advice, Miss Saunders, about what I shall do with my sketch of Miss Maybough."
Cornelia blenched, for no reason that she could think of; she could not gasp out the "Yes" that she tried to utter.
"You see," he went on, "I know that I've disappointed Mrs. Maybough, and I'd like to make her some sort of reparation, but I can't offer her the sketch instead of the portrait; if she liked it she would want to pay for it, and I can't take money for it. So I've thought of giving the sketch to Miss Maybough."
He looked at Cornelia, now, for the advice he had asked, but she did not speak, and he had to say: "But I don't know whether she likes it or not. Do you know whether she does? Has she ever spoken of it to you? Of course she's said civil things to me about it. I beg your pardon! I suppose you don't care to tell, and I had no right to inquire."