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“Oh these? Just some sketches Clem did of me last night.” Theo suddenly felt a little self-conscious to show them to her sister, who was a lot more perceptive than their brother. “I was just showing them to Felix in an attempt to prove Clem is not an out and out philistine.”

“Let me see,” Henrietta said, straightening up.

Theo crossed the room to stand beside her, holding up the drawings, the one of her profile uppermost. Henrietta was very quiet and stood very still, regarding it in silence for a long time. So long in fact that Theo went to move to the next sketch, but Henrietta shook her head.

“No,” she said, with a quick gesture. “I am not finished.”

Theo turned her face to look at her sister. “You think it good then?” she asked, flushing before adding jokingly, “Only Mrs. Cherwell thought it slightly indecent.”

Henrietta nodded slowly. “It is rather revealing,” she said solemnly.

Theo was startled. “Revealing?” Clem had drawn in her high collar and pintucked bodice.

“Of how he sees you, I mean.”

“Because he flatters me?” Theo asked, after a pause, thinking of Mrs. Cherwell’s other response. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Could Clem think that she ...?

Henrietta gave a quick shake of her head. “Do you remember Mr. Dirkson’s portrait of Katie Grigg?” she asked, naming a famous actress of a few years back.

Theo pulled a face. “I never liked that painting. He somehow took a beautiful woman and made her look entirely supercilious and smug. Like a sleek, pampered cat sat upon a silk cushion.”

“Precisely, because Dirkson saw more than just her pretty features. He saw the woman behind the fleshy façade.”

“Fleshy façade?” Theo repeated. “What a horrid way of putting it!”

That brought a reluctant smile to her sister’s lips. “You know full well what I mean,” Henrietta said nudging Theo’s shoulder with her own. “I do not have the same way with words that you do.”

Theo wound an arm about her sister’s waist, and they stood in companionable silence for a moment as Henrietta looked through the rest of them with a sigh. “I should like to have one for my side table,” she said surprising Theo, “but I don’t expect he could be bought to part with them.”

“Well, that is where you are wrong,” she told her roundly. “These two, he will not part with, but the rest belong to me now. Which one would you like?”

After great deliberation, Henrietta selected one and Theo handed it over. No sooner had she done so, than Henrietta made for the table under her window and picked up a large vacant silver frame there. It must have had a picture in it previously. It dawned on Theo that it most probably had been a photograph of Henrietta’s erstwhile suitor.

“Is Vincent visiting with you today?” she asked casually. Was it her imagination or did Hetty flush slightly?

“He is coming by this evening, before dinner,” her sister responded in the same off-hand manner as she slid the back off the frame.

“Why do you not ask him to join us?” Theo suggested impulsively. She waited for Henrietta to dismiss such an idea out of hand, but instead her sister seemed to consider the matter before replying.

“It would not be fair,” Hetty said finally, “to subject him to Felix’s outraged glares while he tried to eat.”

Theo pulled a face. “I think Felix is finally warming up to Clem,” she said, hoping more than believing this to be the case.

“And what about you?” Henrietta asked, apparently absorbed in her task of fitting Clem’s sketch to her frame. “Are you warming to him?”

“Me?” Theo stared at her sister in surprise.

Hetty stood the frame upright and took three steps back to survey the end result. “Yes, you,” she said lightly, her eyes still on the frame rather than her sister. “You no longer thirst to see him bloodied and bruised in the ring?”

For a moment Theo could not think what her sister was referring to. Then she remembered her words from that first encounter with Clem and blushed hotly. “I was never in earnest about that,” she said quickly. “Those were just hasty words. We get along extremely well, I assure you.”

“I hope so,” Hetty said slowly. “I did tell you to have a care around him, but it was plain even at the time that you did not take me seriously.”

To have a care around him? Theo puzzled and her thoughts must have shown in her face, for her sister sighed. “Men like that always ruthlessly pursue what they want,” she said fatalistically. “I daresay, even if I had warned you outright, it would not have put you sufficiently on your guard against him.”

Theo felt tongue-tied and strangely reluctant to explain that it was she that had pursued Clem, not the other way around. How funny that first Lil and now Hetty should think differently.

“Are you going to the concert rooms today?” Hetty asked, generously giving her an out from the awkward turn of their conversation.