The Rosery Folk Part 31

Lady Martlett looked at him angrily, for she felt that he was a.s.suming poverty to annoy her.

"Your Ladyship looks astonished; but I can a.s.sure you that a poor crotchety physician does not get much besides the thanks of grateful patients."

"I noticed that there were a great many portraits at the Academy," said her Ladyship, "portraits of great and famous men."

"Yes; of men, too, who are famous without being great," said the doctor, laughing.

"Indeed!" said Lady Martlett. "I thought the two qualities went together."

"In anyone else," said Jack, "that would be a vulgar error: in your Ladyship, of course, though it may be an error, it cannot be vulgar."

"How dearly I should like to box your ears!" thought Lady Martlett, as she gazed at the provoking face before her. "He doesn't respect me a bit. He doesn't care for me. The man is a very stone."

"Did you notice the portraits of some of the fashionable beauties, Doctor Scales?" she continued, ignoring his compliment, and leading him back to the topic on hand.

"O yes," he said; "several of them, and it set me thinking."

"No? Really!" said her Ladyship, with a mocking laugh. "Was Doctor Scales touched by the beauty of some of the painted canvases with speaking eyes?"

"No; not a bit," he said cheerily--"not a bit. It set me wondering how it was that Lady Martlett's portrait was not on the walls."

"I am not a fashionable beauty," said the lady haughtily.

"Well, let us say a beauty, and not fashionable."

A flash of triumph darted from Lady Martlett's eyes. He had granted, then, that she was beautiful--at last.

But Jack Scales saw the look.

"I have no desire to be painted for an exhibition," said Lady Martlett quietly.

"But I thought all ladies loved to be admired."

"Surely not all," she replied. "Are all women so weak?"

"Well, I don't know. That is a question that needs discussing. I am disposed to think they are. It is a woman's nature; and when she does not care for admiration, she is either very old, or there is something wrong."

"Why, you libel our s.e.x."

"By no means, madam. I did not say that they love the admiration of many. Surely she must be a very unpleasant woman indeed who does not care for the admiration of one man."

"He is caught!" thought Lady Martlett, with a strange feeling of triumph. Perhaps there was something else in her sensation, but she would not own it then.

"Perhaps you are right," she said quietly. "It may be natural; but in these days, Doctor Scales, education teaches us to master our weakness."

"Which most of us do," he said, with a bow, "But really, if your Ladyship's portrait, painted by a masterly hand, had been hung."--He stopped short, as if thinking how to say his next words.

"Well, doctor?" she said, giving him a look that he caught, weighed, and valued on the instant at its true worth.

"It would have had a crowd around it to admire."

"The artist's work, doctor?"

"No, madam; the beauty of the features the artist had set himself to limn."

"Is this a compliment, doctor, or a new form of bantering Lady Scarlett's guest?" said the visitor, rather bitterly.

"Neither the one nor the other, but the simple truth."

Lady Martlett fought hard to conceal the exultation; nay, more, the thrill of pleasure that ran through her nerves as she heard these words; but though outwardly she seemed quite calm, her cheeks were more highly coloured than usual, and her voice sounded deeper and more rich.

Jack Scales told himself she was plotting to humble him to the very dust, so he stood upon his guard.

Perhaps he did not know himself. Who does? If he had, he might have acted differently as he met Lady Martlett's eyes when she raised hers and said; "Ah, then, Doctor Scales has turned courtier and flatterer."

"No; I was speaking very sincerely."

"Ought I to sit here," said Lady Martlett, "and listen to a gentleman who tells me I am more handsome than one of the fashionable beauties of the season?"

"Why not?" he said, smiling. "Is the truthful compliment so displeasing?"

"No," she said softly; "I do not think it is;" and beneath her lowered lashes, the look of triumph intensified as she led him on to speak more plainly.

"It ought not to be," he said, speaking warmly now. "I have paid you a compliment, Lady Martlett, but it is in all sincerity."

"He will be on his knees to me directly," she thought, "and then--"

"For," he continued, "woman generally is a very beautiful work of creation: complicated, wonderful--mentally and corporeally--perfect."

"Perfect, Doctor Scales?"

"Yes, madam; perfect. Your Ladyship, for instance, is one of the most-- I think I may say _the_ most perfect woman I ever saw."

"Doctor Scales?" she said quickly, as she drew herself up, half-angry, but thoroughly endorsing his words; and then to herself, in the triumph that flushed her as she saw the animation in his eyes and the colour in his checks: "At last he is moved; he never spoke or looked like that before." Then aloud: "You are really very complimentary, Doctor Scales;" and she gave him a sharp arrow-like glance, that he saw was barbed with contempt.

"Well, yes, Lady Martlett, I suppose I am," he said; "but it was truly honest, and I will be frank with you. Really, I never come into your presence--I never see you--But no; I ought not to venture to say so much."

"Why not?" she said, with an arch look. "I am not a silly young girl, but a woman who has seen something of the world."

"True, yes," he said, as if encouraged; and Lady Martlett's bosom rose and fell with the excitement of her expected triumph.

Still he hesitated, and asked himself whether he was misjudging her in his belief that she intended to lead him on to a confession of his love, and then cast him off with scorn and insult; but as he looked at her handsome face and shifting eager eyes, he told himself that there was something mingled with the partiality for him which she might possess, and he became hard as steel.

"Well," she said, smiling, and that smile had in it a power that nearly brought him to her feet; "you were saying: 'I never see you'--"

"Exactly. Yes," he said quickly; "I will say it. You'll pardon me, I know. I am but a weak man, with an intense love--"

She drew a long breath, and half turned away her head.