They had been standing just by the drawing-room door, and Christopher turned back into the room with no very satisfactory countenance.  It was very odd, he thought, that she should go down to Ladywell in that mysterious manner, when he might have been admitted to where they were talking without any trouble at all.  What could Ladywell have to say, as an acquaintance calling upon her for a few minutes, that he was not to hear?  Indeed, if it came to that, what right had Ladywell to call upon her at all, even though she were a widow, and to some extent chartered to live in a way which might be considered a trifle free if indulged in by other young women.  This was the first time that he himself had ventured into her house on that very account—­a doubt whether it was quite proper to call, considering her youth, and the fertility of her position as ground for scandal.  But no sooner did he arrive than here was Ladywell blundering in, and, since this conjunction had occurred on his first visit, the chances were that Ladywell came very often.

Julian walked up and down the room, every moment expanding itself to a minute in his impatience at the delay and vexation at the cause.  After scrutinizing for the fifth time every object on the walls as if afflicted with microscopic closeness of sight, his hands under his coat-tails, and his person jigging up and down upon his toes, he heard her coming up the stairs.  When she entered the apartment her appearance was decidedly that of a person subsiding after some little excitement.

‘I did not calculate upon being so long,’ she said sweetly, at the same time throwing back her face and smiling.  ’But I—­was longer than I expected.’

‘It seemed rather long,’ said Christopher gloomily, ’but I don’t mind it.’

‘I am glad of that,’ said Ethelberta.

’As you asked me to stay, I was very pleased to do so, and always should be; but I think that now I will wish you good-bye.’

‘You are not vexed with me?’ she said, looking quite into his face.  ’Mr. Ladywell is nobody, you know.’

‘Nobody?’

’Well, he is not much, I mean.  The case is, that I am sitting to him for a subject in which my face is to be used—­otherwise than as a portrait—­and he called about it.’

‘May I say,’ said Christopher, ’that if you want yourself painted, you are ill-advised not to let it be done by a man who knows how to use the brush a little?’

‘O, he can paint!’ said Ethelberta, rather warmly.  ’His last picture was excellent, I think.  It was greatly talked about.’

‘I imagined you to say that he was a mere nobody!’

’Yes, but—­how provoking you are!—­nobody, I mean, to talk to.  He is a true artist, nevertheless.’

Christopher made no reply.  The warm understanding between them had quite ended now, and there was no fanning it up again.  Sudden tiffs had been the constant misfortune of their courtship in days gone by, had been the remote cause of her marriage to another; and the familiar shadows seemed to be rising again to cloud them with the same persistency as ever.  Christopher went downstairs with well-behaved moodiness, and left the house forthwith.  The postman came to the door at the same time.