When she had done so, she closed the book, and as the maid was in and out of the room during luncheon, it was not till it was finished and cleared away and we were alone that I asked her what she had written.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lonsdale; that’s right, isn’t it?  I did not put Trevor for I always think ‘make your lies short’ is a good rule.”

“I thought you were such a truthful person,” I said a little sadly.

“So I am—­to you, for instance, so I should be to any one who has the right to hear truth; but the world has no right, and I don’t care what lies I tell it, it’s such an inquisitive old bore!”

I laughed.  Viola always made you laugh when you felt you ought to be angry with her.

“Come out now,” I said, “let’s enjoy this lovely afternoon.  I should like to paint you under that tree,” I added musingly, looking out on the tree in its white glory.

“In your usual style?” she returned laughing.  “I don’t think you could here.  Mrs. Jevons would turn me out as not being respectable; not even being Mrs. Lonsdale would save me.”

“You would make a lovely picture, even dressed,” I returned, musing; “but then of course it would not sell for half the price.”

“Nothing is really snapped at but the nude.  That lovely landscape I painted when I was young and foolish,—­it took me two years to work it off, and the veriest little daub of an unclothed girl goes directly at a hundred guineas.”

“A great compliment to our natural charms,” laughed Viola.  “I am delighted personally at anything that is a note of protest against the tyranny of the dressmaker and fashion.”

“What shall we do?” I queried; “it’s beautifully hot,” I added persuasively.

“I’ll tell you:  we will go into the oak wood; the oaks grow low and the ground and the land rise all round, no one can possibly see us without coming quite close; on that blue carpet you shall paint me lying asleep, we will call the picture ‘The Soul of the Wood,’ and you shall sell it for a thousand.  Come along.”

So it was decided, and with one of her thick cloaks, that she could throw round her instantly if surprised, and my artist’s pack we started for the wood.

It was a hot golden day, the one day we should get of really fine weather in the whole English year, and when we reached the wood the light under the oak boughs was magnificent, a soft mellow glory falling down on the blue hyacinths which grew so closely together that it was as if a sea of vivid colour had invaded the dell or a great patch of the blue sky had fallen there.

We had difficulty in getting into the wood as the undergrowth of young oak scrub made it almost impenetrable; it stood up straight, and the great, swaying, huge, spreading boughs of the old oaks above came down and rested on and amongst the young oaks, like a roof upon pillars, and the leaves of both intermingled till they were like green silk curtains hung from ceiling to floor.  When we had finally pushed through almost on our hands and knees to the centre of the wood, the scrub grew less close, the carpet of blue was perfect, a circle of green shut us in, we were in a magic chamber, through the roof of which came floods of green and golden light.