have her portrait locked up in a velvet case?" demanded Felicity in a
soft, sweet voice.

"I wonder!" said Chetwode.

"Oh, don't be so irritating. Don't you _know_ you have it?"

"I haven't known it long."

His coolness roused her, and she said angrily--

"Then you ought to have known. I've been fearing that your casual ways
are a very convenient screen for----"

"For what?" he asked, smiling. He was disposed to tease her for having
doubted him.

She did not answer. He came and sat next to her.

"And so you would have cared?"

"Cared? I should think so. I've been miserable!"

"What a shame! I'm very sorry--I mean, very glad. But you might have
spared yourself all this worry, dear, if you'd thought two minutes."

"How? How do you prove that what I imagined isn't true?"

"My dear girl, could you seriously suspect me of wanting to possess a
coloured portrait on porcelain taken from a photograph? Did you think
I'd have such a thing in the house--except inadvertently?"

"It's a pretty face," she said.

"But it's an appalling picture! Don't I _care_ about things? I hope I
haven't got any silly vanity about it, but I don't think I ever have
anything wrong--I mean, artistically."

He looked round the room with the uncontrollable pride of the collector.

"No, my dear," he went on, "you've done me an injustice. From you I'm
really surprised."

"But _anything_, as a souvenir of a person you like very much ..." she
said hesitatingly.

"Oh, all right!" he answered. "Do you suppose if I'd an awful oleograph
of _you_, even--that I'd keep it as a souvenir? Good heavens, Felicity,
one doesn't bring sentiment into _that_ sort of thing! You ought to have
known me better."

She waited a moment.

"Then on those grounds alone I'm to consider I'm utterly wrong?"

"Rather! Suppose you'd found a wonderful early sketch by Whistler or
Burne-Jones, say, of a pretty woman--even then I should never have
believed you'd be such a Philistine as to suppose that the person who
_sat_ for it had any interest for me. But a thing like that!" He laughed
and shrugged his shoulders.

"How did it get there?"

"How did it get there?" he answered. "Last time I stayed with them,
Tregelly sent it up to me for my critical opinion on it as a work of
art." He laughed. "It made me so sick that I locked it up, and dropped
or lost the key, or else I told the man to put it away. As he's an ass,
I suppose he packed it among my things. I suppos