came from the door to meet them.
"This is an artist that I met at the knoll," said Doris, calmly. "He is looking for subjects for pictures. I think he mentioned his name was Mr. Leslie, and he wishes to paint me."
"Wants a picture of you, my darling!" said honest Mark, his face lighting with a smile. "Then he shows his good taste. Walk in, sir; walk in. Let us ask my wife."
He led the way into the cool, neat, quaint kitchen-room, hated of Doris' soul, but to the artist a study most excellent.
Then did the artist look at the Brace family in deepest wonder. Mark had called the wood-nymph "my darling," and asserted a father's right; and yet not one line or trace of Mark was in this dainty maid.
Leslie turned to study Patty, who had made her courtesy and taken the basket of berries – dark, strong, plump, tidy, intelligent, kindly, plain. Not a particle of Patty in this aristocratic young beauty, who called her "mother" in a slighting tone.
Then, in despair, he fixed his eyes on Mattie Brace – brown, earnest, honest, dark, sad eyes, good, calm – just as little like the pearl-and-gold beauty as the others.
Meanwhile Mark and Patty eyed each other.
"I want to speak to you a minute, Mark," said Patty; and the pair retired to the dairy.
Doris flushed angrily, and drummed on the window-sill.
"Behold a mystery!" said Gregory Leslie to himself.
"Mark," said Patty, in the safe retirement of the milk-pans, "this needs considering. Doris is not our own. To have her picture painted and exhibited in London to all the great folk, may be the last thing her mother would desire: and her mother is yet living, as the money comes always the same way."
"I declare, Patty, I never thought of that."
"And yet, if Doris has set her heart on it, she'll have it done – you see," added Patty.
"True," said Mark. "And people will hardly think of seeking resemblances to middle-aged people in a sort of fancy picture. Better let it be done under our eye, Patty."
"I suppose so, since we cannot hinder its doing."
They returned to the kitchen.
"We have no objection, if you wish to make the picture, sir," said Mark.
"I should think not. I had settled that," said Doris.
"In return for your kindness," said the artist to Patty, "I will make a small portrait of her for your parlor."
So one sitting was given then and there, and others were arranged for.
When Earle came that evening he heard all the story, and then, being with Doris in the garden, they fell out over it, beginning as set forth in the opening of this chapter.
"I cannot and will not have another man gazing at you, studying your every look, carrying your face in his soul."
"If you are to begin by being jealous," said Doris, delighted, "I might as well know. I enjoy jealousy as a proof of love, and as amusing me, but I like admiration, and I mean to have it all my life. If ever I go to London, I expect to have London at my feet. Besides, if you mean to sing me, for all the world, why cannot Mr. Leslie paint me. You say Poetry and Art should wait at the feet of Beauty. Now they shall!"
It ended by truce, and Doris agreed that Earle should be present at every sitting. This calmed Earle, and rejoiced her. She thought it would be charming to pit poet and artist one against the other.
But the sittings did not thus fall out. Earle grew much interested, and he and Gregory took a hearty liking for each other. Gregory admired Doris as a beauty, but his experienced eye detected the lacking loveliness of her soul. Besides, he had no love but art, and his heart shrined one sacred pervading memory. Daily, as he painted, that haunting reminiscence of some long-ago-seen face, or painted portrait, grew upon him. He looked at Doris and searched the past. One day he cried out, as he painted:
"I have it!"
"What have you?" demanded Doris, curiously.
"A face, a name, that you constantly brought to mind in a shadowy way – that you resembled."
"Man or woman?" demanded Doris, eagerly.
"A man."
She was disappointed. She had hoped to hear of some reigning belle of society.
"Was he handsome?" she asked, less interested.
"Remarkably so. How else, if your face was like his?"
"But how can it be like a stranger I never heard of?"
"A coincidence – a freak of nature," said Leslie, slowly.
"And what was he like?" demanded Doris.
"Faithless and debonair! False, false and fair, like all his line. It was a fatal race; he no worse than the rest."
CHAPTER XV
"I WILL BE TRUE – FOREVER."
Despite all the love eagerly made by Earle, and readily accepted by Doris, there was no formal engagement. A hundred times the decisive words trembled on the lips of the poet-lover, and he chided himself that they were not uttered. But then, if she said "no," what lot would be his? As for Doris not being prepared to say "yes," she deferred decision, and checked Earle on the verge of a finality, for she was not ready to dismiss her suitor. If he fled from Brackenside, what pleasure would be left in life?
She had soon ceased her efforts to flirt with Gregory Leslie; he regarded her with the eye of an artist – what of his feeling that was not artistic, was paternal.
At first, she had hoped that an opening might be made for her to city life. She had wild dreams that he could get an engagement for her as an actress or concert-singer, where wonderful beauty would make up for lack of training; she built wild castles in the air, about titled ladies who would take her for an adopted daughter, or as a companion. But Gregory Leslie was the last man to tempt a lovely, heedless young girl to the vortex of city life.
She told him one day of some of her longings and distastes. She hated the farm, the country. She wanted the glory of the city – dress, theaters, operas, promenades.
"Can't you tell me how to get what I want?"
"Child," said Gregory, "you would weary of it, and long for peace. You have a devoted young lover, who offers you a comfortable home at Lindenholm."
"To live with my mother-in-law!" sneered Doris.
"An admirable woman. I have met her."
"It would be just this dullness repeated all my life," said Doris, tearful and pouting.
"It would be love, comfort, safety, goodness. Besides, this young Moray is one of our coming men. He has native power. I am much mistaken if he does not make a name, fame, place, fortune."
"Do you suppose he will one day go to London and be great?"
"Yes, I do."
"I would like that. A poet's lovely home, where learned people, and musical wonders,
