"But, unfortunately, large plans want large means," he added, with a smile, "and I fear it will come to it--has Augustina said anything to you about it?--I fear there is nothing for it, but that our beauteous lady there must provide them."
He nodded towards the picture that gleamed from the opposite wall. Then he added gravely, and with a perfect simplicity:
Several times during the fortnight that she had known him, Laura had heard him speak with a similar simplicity about his personal and pecuniary affairs. That anyone so stately should treat himself and his own worldly concerns with so much _naïveté_ had been a source of frequent surprise to her. To what, then, did his dignity, his reserve apply?
Nevertheless, because, childishly, she had already taken a side, as it were, about the picture, his manner, with its apparent indifference, annoyed her. She drew back.
"Yes, Augustina told me. But isn't it cruel? isn't it unkind? A picture like that is alive. It has been here so long--one could hardly feel it belonged only to oneself. It is part of the house, isn't it?--part of the family? Won't other people--people who come after--reproach you?"
Helbeck lifted his shoulders, his dark face half amused, half sad.
"She died a hundred years ago, pretty creature! She has had her turn; so have we--in the pleasure of looking at her."
"But she belongs to you," said the girl insistently. "She is your own kith and kin."
He hesitated, then said, with a new emphasis that answered her own:
"Perhaps there are two sorts of kindred----"
"And the one you mean may always push out the other? I know, because one of your children told me a story to-day--such a frightful story!--of a saint who would not go to see his dying brother, for obedience' sake. She asked me if I liked it. How could I say I liked it! I told her it was horrible! I wondered how people could tell her such tales."
Her bearing was again all hostility--a young defiance. She was delighted to confess herself. Her crime, untold, had been pressing upon her conscience, hurting her natural frankness.
Helbeck's face changed. He looked at her attentively, the fine dark eye, under the commanding brow, straight and sparkling.
Her breast fluttered. She trembled, he saw, with an excitement she could hardly repress.