Hortense was in the drawing-room. She was brilliantly dressed, and her dark
aggressive face wore a look of bravado. In her rich contralto she welcomed
Cope with an initiative which all but crowded her aunt into second place.
Under the very nose of Medora Phillips, whom she breezily seemed to regard
as a chaperon, she brought forward the sketch of Cope in oils, which she
had done partly from observation and partly from memory. She may have had,
too, some slight aid from a photograph,--one which her aunt had wheedled
out of Cope and had missed, on one occasion at least, from her desk in the
library. Hortense now boldly asked his cooperation for finishing her small
canvas.
Though the "wood-nymphs" of last autumn's legend might indeed be, as he had
broadly said, "a nice enough lot of girls," they really were not all alike
and indistinguishable: one of them at least, as he should learn, had
thumbs.
Hortense wheeled into action.
"The composition is good," she observed, looking at the canvas as it stood
propped against the back of a Chippendale chair; "and, in general, the
values are all right.
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