Lord Watergate, looking up suddenly, met Gertrude's glance. For a moment a puzzled expression came into his eyes, then changed to one of recognition and recollection. After some hesitation, he said: "It must be difficult to do justice in a photograph to such a picture." She threw him back his commonplace: "Oh, the gradations of tone often come out surprisingly well." Inwardly she was saying, "How he must hate the sight of me." Darrell looked from one to the other, dimly suspicious of their mutual consciousness, then rejected the suspicion as an absurd one. "I will write to you about those sketches," he said, as the cab was announced. Lucy and Phyllis were frisking about the studio, as young creatures will do in the spring, when Gertrude entered, weary and dispirited, from her expedition to The Sycamores. The girls fell upon her at once for news. She flung herself into the sitter's chair, which half revolved with the violence of the action. "Say something nice to me," she cried. "Compliment me on my beauty, my talents, my virtues. There is no flattery so gross that I could not swallow it." Phyllis looked from her to Lucy and tapped her forehead in significant pantomime. "You are everything that is most delightful," said Lucy; "only do tell us about the great man." "He was odious," cried Gertrude. "She has never been quarrelling, I will not say with her own, but with _our_ bread-and-butter," said Phyllis, in affected dismay. "I will never go there again, if that's what you mean." "But what is the matter, Gerty? I found him quite polite." "Polite? It is worse than rudeness, a politeness which says so plainly: 'This is for my own sake, not for yours.'" "You are really cross, Gerty; what has the illustrious Sidney been doing to you?" said Lucy, who did not suffer from violent likes and dislikes. "Oh," cried Gertrude, laughing ruefully; "how shall I explain? He is this sort of man;--if a woman were talking to him of--of the motions of the heavenly bodies, he would be thinking all the time of the shape of her ankles." "Great heavens, Gerty, did you make the experiment?" Phyllis opened her pretty eyes their widest as she spoke. "We all know," remarked Lucy, with a twinkle in her eye, "that it is best to begin with a little aversion." Phyllis struck an attitude: "'Friends meet to part, but foes once joined----'" "Girls, what has come over you?" exclaimed Gertrude, dismayed. "Gerty is shocked," said Lucy; "one is always stumbling unawares on her sense of propriety." "She is like the Bishop of Rumtyfoo," added Phyllis; "she does draw the line at such unexpected places." [Illustration: Decoration] [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER IX. SHOW SUNDAY. _La science l'avait garde naif._ ALPHONSE DAUDET.