Conrad Lagrange smiled as he saw that the easel was without a canvas. The
portrait of Mrs. Taine was turned to the wall.
Chapter XXIV
James Rutlidge Makes a Mistake
When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange had said, "good-by," to their friends,
at Sibyl Andres' home, that evening; and had returned to spend their last
night at the camp in the sycamores; the girl's mood was again the mood of
one oppressed by a haunting, foreboding fear.
Sibyl could not have expressed, or even to herself defined, her fear. She
only knew that in the presence of James Rutlidge she was frightened. She
had tried many times to overcome her strange antipathy; for Rutlidge,
until that day in the studio, had never been other than kind and courteous
in his persistent efforts to win her friendship. Perhaps it was the
impression left by the memory of Myra Willard's manner at the time of
their first meeting with him, three years before, in Brian Oakley's home;
perhaps it was because the woman with the disfigured face had so often
warned her against permitting her slight acquaintance with Rutlidge to
develop; perhaps it was something else--some instinct, possible, only, to
one of her pure, unspoiled nature--whatever it was, the mountain girl who
was so naturally unafraid, feared this man who, in his own world, was an
acknowledged authority upon matters of the highest spiritual and moral
significance.
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