od into
MacMaster's book. James had so long been steeped in that penetrating
personality that he fairly exuded it. Many of his very phrases,
mannerisms, and opinions were impressions that he had taken on like wet
plaster in his daily contact with Treffinger. Inwardly he was lined
with cast-off epitheliums, as outwardly he was clad in the painter's
discarded coats. If the painter's letters were formal and perfunctory,
if his expressions to his friends had been extravagant, contradictory,
and often apparently insincere--still, MacMaster felt himself not
entirely without authentic sources. It was James who possessed
Treffinger's legend; it was with James that he had laid aside his pose.
Only in his studio, alone, and face to face with his work, as it seemed,
had the man invariably been himself. James had known him in the one
attitude in which he was entirely honest; their relation had fallen
well within the painter's only indubitable integrity. James's report
of Treffinger was distorted by no hallucination of artistic insight,
colored by no interpretation of his own. He merely held what he
had heard and seen; his mind was a sort of camera obscura. His very
limitations made him the more literal and minutely accurate.

One morning, when MacMaster was seated before the _Marriage of Phaedra_,
James entered on his usual round of dusting.

"I've 'eard from Lydy Elling by the post, sir," he remarked, "an' she's
give h'orders to 'ave the 'ouse put in readiness. I doubt she'll be 'ere
by Thursday or Friday next."

"She spends most of her time abroad?" queried MacMaster; on the subject
of Lady Treffinger James consistently maintained a very delicate
reserve.

"Well, you could 'ardly say she does that, sir. She finds the 'ouse a
bit dull, I daresay, so durin' the season she stops mostly with Lydy
Mary Percy, at Grosvenor Square. Lydy Mary's a h'only sister." After a
few moments he continued, speaking in jerks governed by the rigor of his
dusting: "H'only this morning I come upon this scarfpin," exhibiting a
very striking instance of that article, "an' I recalled as 'ow Sir 'Ugh
give it me when 'e was acourting of Lydy Elling. Blowed if I ever see a
man go in for a 'oman like 'im! 'E was that gone, sir. 'E never went in
on anythink so 'ard before nor since, till 'e went in on the _Marriage_
there--though 'e mostly went in on things pretty keen; 'ad the measles
when 'e was thirty, strong as cholera, an' come close to dyin' of 'em.