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It was not till August that he hired a little cottage on the New Jersey coast and invited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the invitation, and the three had spent together six weeks of seashore idleness, during which Stanwell's modest rafters shook with Caspar's denunciations of his host's venality, and the brightness of Kate's gratitude was tempered by a tinge of reproach.
"Are they new people too, Marcus, like the Stanwell's?" but Dr. Luttrell shook his head. "No, they have lived in the place for years, but Mr. Williams quarrelled with Dr. Bevan, and his daughter dared not send for him, and as I was the nearest medical man, the servant came to me; it was just a fluke, that's all." "Is there only one daughter, Marcus?"
KATE ARRAN was Stanwell's sitter; but the janitor had hardly filled the stove when she came in to say that she could not sit. Caspar had had a bad night: he was depressed and feverish, and in spite of his protests she had resolved to fetch the doctor.
It had been destined to reflect the opulent image of Mrs. Alpheus Van Orley, but some secret reluctance of Stanwell's had stayed the execution of the task. He had painted two of Mrs. Millington's friends in the spring, had been much praised and liberally paid for his work, and then, declining several recent orders to be executed at Newport, had surprised his friends by remaining quietly in town.
These exhortations were chiefly directed to Stanwell, partly because the inmates of the other studios were apt to elude them, partly also because the rumours concerning Stanwell's portrait of Mrs. Millington had begun to disquiet the sculptor.
But her grief over Stanwell's apostasy could not efface the fact that he had offered her brother the means of escape from town, and Stanwell himself was consoled by the reflection that but for Mrs. Millington's portrait he could not have performed even this trifling service for his friends.
"I'm not ashamed; I talk of going on." She received this with a long shuddering sigh, and turned her eyes away from him. "Oh, why why why?" she lamented. It was on the tip of Stanwell's tongue to answer, "That I might say to you what I am just saying now " but he replied instead: "A man may paint bad pictures and be a decent fellow. Look at Mungold, after all!"
Caspar was putting on a pound a week, and had plunged into a fresh "creation" more symbolic and encumbering than the monument of which he had been so opportunely relieved. If there was any cloud on Stanwell's enjoyment of life, it was caused by the discovery that success had quadrupled Caspar's artistic energies.
To Stanwell's present mood, however, there was something more than usually irritating in the gratuitous assumption that Arran had only to derogate from his altitude to have a press of purchasers at his door. "Well what did you gain by kicking your widower out?" he objected. "Why can't a man do two kinds of work one to please himself and the other to boil the pot?" "Why can't a man why can't he?
"Like business! Like a big order for a bortrait, Mr. Sdanwell dat's what it's like!" cried Shepson, swinging round on him. Stanwell's stare widened. "An order for me?" "Vy not? Accidents vill happen," said Shepson jocosely. "De fact is, Mrs. Archer Millington wants to be bainted you know her sdyle? Well, she prides herself on her likeness to little Gladys.
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