‘What a very pretty speech!  Was it not, my dear?’ said Mrs Broughton.  And then Mrs Broughton laughed.  There was something slightly hysterical in her laugh which grated on Dalrymple’s ears—­something which seemed to tell him that at the present moment his dear friend was not going to assist him honestly in his effort.

‘Only that I should put him out, I would get up and make a curtsey,’ said Clara.  No young lady could ever talk of making a curtsey for such a speech if she supposed it to have been made in earnestness.  And Clara, no doubt, understood that a man might make a hundred such speeches in the presence of a third person without any danger that they would be taken as meaning anything.  All this Dalrymple knew, and began to think that he had better put down his palette and brush, and do the work which he had before him in the most prosaic language that he could use.  He could, at any rate, succeed in making Clara acknowledge his intention in this way.  He waited still for a minute or two, and it seemed to him that Mrs Broughton had no intention of piling her fagots on the present occasion.  It might be that the remembrance of her husband’s ruin prevented her from sacrificing herself in the other direction also.

’I am not very good at pretty speeches, but I am good at telling the truth,’ said Dalrymple.

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Mrs Broughton, still with a touch of hysterical action in her throat.  ’Upon my word, Conway, you know how to praise yourself.’

’He dispraises himself most unnecessarily in denying the prettiness of his language,’ said Clara.  As she spoke she hardly moved her lips, and Dalrymple went on painting from the model.  It was clear that Miss Van Siever understood that the painting, and not the pretty speeches, was the important business on hand.

Mrs Broughton had now tucked her feet up on the sofa, and was gazing at the artist as he stood at his work.  Dalrymple, remembering how he had offered her his purse—­an offer which, in the existing crisis of her affairs, might mean a great deal—­felt that she was ill-natured.  Had she intended to do him a good turn, she would have gone now; but there she lay, with her feet tucked up, clearly proposing to be present through the whole of the morning’s sitting.  His anger against her added something to his spirit, and made him determine that he would carry out his purpose.  Suddenly, therefore, he prepared himself for action.

He was in the habit of working with a Turkish cap on his head, and with a short apron tied round him.  There was something picturesque about the cap, which might not have been incongruous with love-making.  It is easy to suppose that Juan wore a Turkish cap when he sat with Haidee in Lambro’s island.  But we may be quite sure that he did not wear an apron.  Now Dalrymple had thought of all this, and had made up his mind to work today without his apron; but when arranging his easel and his brushes, he had put it on from the force of habit, and was now disgusted with himself as he remembered it.  He put down his brush, divested his thumb of his palette, then took off his cap, and after that untied the apron.