'No, not by you--certainly not by you. I did not mean that. I did not expect that you should misinterpret them.' Then she laughed hysterically--a little low, gurgling, hysterical laugh; and after that she wiped her eyes, and then she smiled, and then she put her hand very gently upon his shoulder. 'Thank God, Conway, we are quite safe there--are we not?'
He had made a blunder, and it was necessary that he should correct it.
His watch was lying in the trough of his easel, and he looked at it and wondered why Miss Van Siever was not there. He had tripped, and he must make a little struggle and recover his step. 'As I said before, it shall never be misunderstood by me. I have never been vain enough to suppose for a moment that there was any other feeling--not for a moment. You women can be so careful, while we men are always off our guard! A man loves because he cannot help it; but a woman has been careful, and answers him--with friendship. Perhaps I am wrong to say that I never thought of winning anything more; but I never think of winning more now.' Why the mischief didn't Miss Van Siever come! In another five minutes, despite himself, he would be on his knees, ****** a mock declaration, and she would be pouring forth the vial of her mock wrath, or giving him mock counsel as to the restraint of his passion. He had gone through it all before, and was tired of it; but for his life he did not know how to help himself.
'Conway,' said she, gravely, 'how dare you address me in such language.'
'Of course it is very wrong, I know that.'
'I'm not speaking of myself now. I have learned to think so little of myself, as even to be indifferent to the feeling of injury you are doing me. My life is a blank, and I almost think that nothing can hurt me further. I have not heart left enough to break; no, not enough to be broken. It is not of myself that I am thinking, when I ask you how do you dare to address my in such language. Do you not know that it is an injury to another?'
'To what other?' asked Conway Dalrymple, whose mind was becoming rather confused, and who was not quite sure whether the other one was Mr Dobbs Broughton, or somebody else.
'To that poor girl who is coming here now, who is devoted to you, and to whom, I do not doubt, you have uttered words which ought to have made it impossible to speak to me as you spoke not a moment since.'
Things were becoming very grave and difficult. They would have been very grave, indeed, had not some god saved him by sending Miss Van Siever to his rescue at this moment. He was beginning to think what he would say in answer to the accusation now made, when his eager ear caught the sound of her step upon the stairs; and before the pause in conversation which the circumstances admitted had given place to the necessity for further speech, Miss Van Siever had knocked at the door and had entered the room. He was rejoiced, and I think that Mrs Broughton did not regret the interference. It is always well that these little dangerous scenes should be brought to sudden ends. The last details of such romances, if drawn out to their natural conclusions, are apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not want him to go down on his knees, knowing that the getting up again is always awkward.
'Clara, I began to think you were never coming,' said Mrs Broughton, with her sweetest smile.
'I began to think so myself also,' said Clara. 'And I believe this must be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one.'
'Is anything the matter at home?' said Mrs Broughton, clasping her hands together.
'Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning, and Isaid I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have told her.'
'But what did she ask? What did she say?'
'She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose therefore she has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning, and we left the house together. She will ask some direct question tonight, or before long, and then there will be an end of it.'
'Let us make the best of our time, then,' said Dalrymple; and the sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs Broughton had twisted a turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and assisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did so, that she was like Isaac, piling the fagots for her own sacrifice. Only Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket would save her. But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill, piling the fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he did of one woman or of the other.
After a while when Mrs Broughton had piled the fagots as high as she could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave the room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence during a portion of these sittings. 'Conway,' she said, as she went, 'if this is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should make the most of it.' Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance over the head of the kneeling Jael, and withdrew. Jael, who in those moments would be thinking more of the fatigue of her position than anything else, did not at all take home to herself the peculiar meaning of her friend's words.
Conway Dalrymple understood them thoroughly, and thought that he might as well take the advice given to him. He had made up his mind to propose to Miss Van Siever, and why should he not do so now? He went on with his brush for a couple of minutes without saying a word, working as well as he could work, and then resolved that he would at once begin the other task. 'Miss Van Siever,' he said, 'I am afraid you are tired?'