“Ha, Mr. Wilson,” she said, with a triumphant amiability on her face, “at last I am able to enjoy your company. I have been tired to death, sir, by innumerable squirelings and country Tabithas. Come, has my nephew presented you to Miss Hardacre and Sir Peter?”
“Jeffray has been busy with the ladies, madam,” he said.
“What an absent lad it is! You must forgive him his youth, sir, and the sentimental excitements thereof. I will present you myself, sir, to Miss Hardacre. I hear she has been asking for you. Come. I see her yonder in the oriel.”
“Really, madam,” said the painter, bluntly, “I dare say Miss Hardacre can dispense with my society.”
“Nonsense,” she said, “Miss Hardacre will feel slighted if Richard’s friend is left out in the cold. Take your mask off, sir.”
“Heavens, Mr. Wilson, you cannot be presented to the lady of the house in blinkers! Ah, that is well. Put it in your pocket, sir. And now give me your arm.”
Miss Jilian was sitting on one of the benches in the great oriel that bayed out from the right of the raised dais. The perpendicular window itself was filled with white glass, banded across the centre with the arms of the Hardacres, gules, a clarion argent, and the shields of certain families with whom they had been connected by marriage. Miss Hardacre, who had unmasked, was talking to one of Squire Pierpoint’s daughters when the Lady Letitia came strutting across the hall on Mr. Richard Wilson’s arm. The painter looked red and overheated, nor was his composure under the eyes of the assemblage bettered by his nearly tripping over his sword. Jilian had not noticed the dowager’s approach, so absorbed was she in confiding to Miss Dorothy Pierpoint some very feminine secrets concerning Richard Jeffray. There was a smile of beautiful amiability on the Lady Letitia’s face as she bore down like destiny upon the unconscious maiden.
Jilian’s gray eyes flashed up to find the old lady standing before her with a fat man in a blue coat at her side.
“Permit me, my dear, to present to you my nephew’s friend, Mr. Richard Wilson, the distinguished portrait-painter.”
Poor Dick proceeded to make his most professional and graceful bow. Miss Hardacre, who had gone very white under her delicate rouging, sat staring at the painter’s face as though it were possessed of the grim magic of the Medusa’s.