bly certain that he was in truth alive to nothing but the white
vision under the wall--the delicate three-quarter face, with its pointed
chin, and the wisps of gold hair blowing about the temples.

And the owner of the face! Was she quite unmoved by a situation which
might, Victoria felt, have strained the nerves even of the experienced?

A slight incident seemed to show that she was not unmoved. Lydia had
shown a keen, girlish pleasure in the prospect of sitting to Delorme, the
god, professionally, of her idolatry. Yet the sketch, for that afternoon,
came to nothing. For after an hour's sitting Delorme, as usual, became
restless and excited, exclaimed at the difficulty of the subject, cursed
the light, and finally, in a fit of disgust, wiped out everything he had
done. Lydia rose from her seat, looking rather white, and threw a
strange, appealing glance--the mother caught it--at her young host.
Tatham sprang up, released her instantly and peremptorily, though Delorme
implored for another half-hour. Lydia, unheard by the artist, gave soft
thanks to her deliverer, and, presently, there they were--she and
Harry--strolling up and down the rose-alleys together, as though nothing,
absolutely nothing, had happened.

And yet Harry had only asked her to marry him the night before, and she
had only refused! Impossible to suppose that it was the mere plotting of
the finished coquette. This lover required neither teasing nor kindling.

However, there it was. This little struggling artist had refused Harry;
and she had refused Duddon.

For one could not be so absurd as to ignore _that_. Victoria, sitting in
the shade beside Lady Barbara, who had gone to sleep, looked dreamily
round on the rose-red pile of building, on the great engirdling woods,
the hills, the silver reaches of river--interwoven now with the dark
tree-masses, now with glades of sunlit pasture. Duddon was one of the
great possessions of England. And this slip of a girl, with her home-made
blouses, and her joy in making twenty pounds out of her drawings,
wherewith to pay the rent, had put it aside, apparently without a
moment's hesitation. Magnanimity--or stupidity?

The next moment Victoria was despising her own amazement. "One takes
one's own lofty feelings for granted--but never other people's! She says
she doesn't love him--and that's the reason. And I straightway don't
believe her. What snobs we all are! One's astonishment betrays one's
standard. Gerald say