The Lesson of the Master | Page 6

was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding," the
gentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George.
"At my bidding?"
"Didn't you make him go to church?"
"I never made him do anything in my life but once - when I made him
burn up a bad book. That's all!" At her "That's all!" our young friend
broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew her
eyes to him. His own met them, though not long enough to help him to
understand her; unless it were a step towards this that he saw on the
instant how the burnt book - the way she alluded to it! - would have
been one of her husband's finest things.
"A bad book?" her interlocutor repeated.
"I didn't like it. He went to church because your daughter went," she
continued to General Fancourt. "I think it my duty to call your attention
to his extraordinary demonstrations to your daughter."
"Well, if you don't mind them I don't," the General laughed.
"Il s'attache e ses pas. But I don't wonder - she's so charming."

"I hope she won't make him burn any books!" Paul Overt ventured to
exclaim.
"If she'd make him write a few it would be more to the purpose," said
Mrs. St. George. "He has been of a laziness of late - !"
Our young man stared - he was so struck with the lady's phraseology.
Her "Write a few" seemed to him almost as good as her "That's all."
Didn't she, as the wife of a rare artist, know what it was to produce one
perfect work of art? How in the world did she think they were turned
on? His private conviction was that, admirably as Henry St. George
wrote, he had written for the last ten years, and especially for the last
five, only too much, and there was an instant during which he felt
inwardly solicited to make this public. But before he had spoken a
diversion was effected by the return of the absentees. They strolled up
dispersedly - there were eight or ten of them - and the circle under the
trees rearranged itself as they took their place in it. They made it much
larger, so that Paul Overt could feel - he was always feeling that sort of
thing, as he said to himself - that if the company had already been
interesting to watch the interest would now become intense. He shook
hands with his hostess, who welcomed him without many words, in the
manner of a woman able to trust him to understand and conscious that
so pleasant an occasion would in every way speak for itself. She
offered him no particular facility for sitting by her, and when they had
all subsided again he found himself still next General Fancourt, with an
unknown lady on his other flank.
"That's my daughter - that one opposite," the General said to him
without lose of time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red hair, in
a dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken texture, a
garment that clearly shirked every modern effect. It had therefore
somehow the stamp of the latest thing, so that our beholder quickly
took her for nothing if not contemporaneous.
"She's very handsome - very handsome," he repeated while he
considered her. There was something noble in her head, and she
appeared fresh and strong.
Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon: "She
looks too hot - that's her walk. But she'll be all right presently. Then I'll
make her come over and speak to you."
"I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If you were to take me over

THERE - !" the young man murmured.
"My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? I don't mean
for you, but for Marian," the General added.
"I would put myself out for her soon enough," Overt replied; after
which he went on: "Will you be so good as to tell me which of those
gentlemen is Henry St. George?"
"The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he IS making up to her -
they're going off for another walk."
"Ah is that he - really?" Our friend felt a certain surprise, for the
personage before him seemed to trouble a vision which had been vague
only while not confronted with the reality. As soon as the reality
dawned the mental image, retiring with a sigh, became substantial
enough to suffer a slight wrong. Overt, who had spent a considerable
part of his short life in foreign lands, made now, but not for the first
time, the reflexion that whereas in those countries he had almost always