"Nobody else will talk about Nelly's vanity. Why, she hasn't a particle. As for the papers, I won't have one in the house--"
"Except the _Evening Post_?" suggested Aunt Marcia.
"Which Cadge says isn't a newspaper," I contributed.
I was ready to laugh at John's discomfiture, but the possible truth of his words struck me, and I cried out:
"People won't really believe I did it on purpose, whatever the papers say--that I went there just to be looked at! Oh, that would be horrible! Horrible!"
"Of course not," John said with curt inconsistency to bring me comfort; but I had a reply more sincere--a fleeting glance only, but it said: "The Queen can do no wrong."
"Oh, I hope you are right; I hope no one thought that," I said confusedly in answer to the glance. And then I bent over the Caesar that Boy laid upon my lap, while Uncle asked:--
"Well, my son, is there mutiny again in the camp of our Great and Good Friend, Divitiacus the Aeduan?"
A few minutes later John said good-night with a ludicrous expression of pained, absent-minded patience. I didn't go to the door with him; I scarcely looked up from Boy's ablative absolutes.
Oh I treated him shabbily. And yet--why did he use every effort that day to keep me ignorant of my own rightful affairs, only to come at me himself with a club, gibbering of newspapers?
Why, John's absurd! He would have liked to find me--not ill, of course, but overcome by the Opera experience, dependent on him, ready to be shielded, hidden, petted, comforted. He can not see me as I am--a strong, splendid woman, ready to accept the responsibilities of my beauty.
Dear me! Beauty is a responsibility! Such troubles, such trials about nothing! It's photographs this time!
Last Wednesday--the day after the papers published so much about me--a strange man called in Mrs. Baker's absence and begged me to let him take my photograph--as a service to Art. If Aunt had been at home I wouldn't have been permitted to see him. But the man was pleasant and gentlemanly, and so sincere in his admiration that he won the way to my heart. I'm afraid devotion is still so new to me that it's the surest road to my good graces. He hesitated and stammered, blinking before my shining loveliness as if blinded, as he offered to take the pictures for nothing, if he might exhibit them afterwards; and at last I went to his studio, though I said that his work must be for me only, and that I must pay for it.