XV
DINNER was a miserable meal. The Yorkshire pudding was light, the roast sirloin was done to a turn, the potatoes were white and floury, the kidney beans were tender, but June could find nothing in the way of appetite. The mere presence of William at the other side of the table was almost more than she could bear. So keen was her sense of a terribly false position that she dare not look at him. What did he think of her? How must she appear to one all high-minded goodness and generosity?
Surely he must know, after what had just passed, that her love of the picture was mere base deceit. Surely he must hold such an opinion of her now that he would never believe or trust her again. And the tragedy of it was that she could not hope to make him see the real motive which lay behind it all.
Seated at the table, making only a pretence of eating, but listening with growing anger and disgust to the artful change she now detected in the tone of Uncle Si, it was as if the chair in which she sat was poised on the edge of an abyss. William must despise her quite as much as she despised the Old Crocodile, was the thought which turned her heart to stone.
S. Gedge Antiques having had the wit to discover the set of the wind, had begun most successfully to trim his sails. An hour’s careful examination of the picture that morning had convinced him that he had underrated its merits. There was very good work in it, and as a lifelong lover of art—with a devout glance at William—good work always appealed to him. But whether the thing, as a whole, was to be rated as highly as William put it, was decidedly an open question. Still the picture had merit, and personally he should treasure it as much for William’s sake as for its own.
June realized that it was now the turn of this cunning old fox to make love to the Van Roon’s owner. But was he cunninger than she? Yet what concerned her more than anything just now was the plain fact that he had already managed to persuade himself that the treasure was his property.
This was not the hour to disabuse his mind. And no matter when that hour came she foresaw a dire quarrel. She was now involved in a business to strain all the resources of her diplomacy. But William needed help. Cost what it might the task devolved upon her of looking after his affairs.
William, meanwhile, in his own peculiar way, seemed not averse from looking after hers. After dinner her first duty was to clear the table and wash up; and he simply insisted upon bearing a hand. He carried the tray into the back kitchen, and then, almost with defiance, presided at the washing of the crockery, while she had to be content with the humbler office of drying it.
“It’s your hands I’m thinking of, Miss June.”
“My hands are no affair of yours,” was the terse reply.
The lover of beauty shyly declared that such hands were not meant for such a task.
“Nothing to write home about—my hands aren’t.”
Politely sceptical, William drew from his pocket a bit of pumice stone.
“It is to take the soils out of your fingers,” he said, offering this talisman shyly.
June’s face was now a tawny scarlet. She did not know whether to laugh or to be angry. Yet how was it possible to be angry with a creature who was so charmingly absurd?
“May I take them out for you?”
The answer was “no.”
But somehow her face must have said “yes.” For without more ado, the amazing fellow took one of her hands and with nice discretion began to apply the pumice stone.
“There, now,” he said finally.
A stern rebuke trembled upon her lips, yet with the best will in the world it could not find a form of words whereby to get itself uttered.