to herself, but she could pretend things to other people.  She was too vital to be vulgar, but she was also too vital to be quite well-bred, and often her methods were startling, as for her age and period she cared remarkably little what she said.  She would try and wake Ishmael up; it would do him good.  For all her plainness of actual feature, if that wonderful mouth were excepted, no one knew better than Georgie that she had beaute de diable, and the sheer impudent vitality of her swept nearly every man off his feet if she wished it to.  “Me, m’dear?” she would protest to Judy or any friend who pointed this out to her.  “Most hideous female, m’dear.  Face like a pudding.”  Here she would puff out her cheeks and hold them distended till her soft infectious laughter made them collapse.  “Everyone’s kind to me, because I’m so plain they’re sorry for me....”

Privately she considered she knew everything in the world there was to know about men.  In reality she knew very little, placing as much too much importance on sex as Judy placed too little.

Arrived at the Manor, she found that Nicky had disappeared, after an annoying and rather alarming habit of his, and was not expected back, by those who knew his roving ways, till the evening.  Ishmael informed her of this with rather a rueful smile.

“He’s always had these wild fits ever since he’s been big enough to go off on his own,” he told her; “and he steals something out of the larder, or if he can’t do that he just trusts to his eyes and tongue when he meets some kind good lady, and he scours the countryside till late.  The worst of it is I shan’t be able to do anything to him when he turns up this evening, because he’ll pretend he ran away because he was so afraid of me after yesterday.”

“Are you so terrifying?” said Georgie, peeping up at him from under her shady hat.

“Not at all.  I am a very easily-led person.”

Georgie considered this, her head on one side.  Then she said briskly:  “Then will you please help me take my sketching things somewhere, as I can’t get on with the portrait?  After all, it’s a bit your fault, isn’t it?  You should have brought your son up better.”

“Of course, I’ll take them anywhere you like,” said Ishmael; “where shall it be?”

Thus it came about that Killigrew and Judy, a couple of hours later, coming to the plateau, found Georgie there, busy over a sketch of Ishmael in profile, with his head telling dark against the grey sunlit cliff wall, because Georgie said it was easier to paint dark against light.  She was really working in her vivid, effective way, and Killigrew found little to criticise.