CHAPTER VI.
'I must alter that fold over the arm,' murmured Fenwick, stepping back, with a frown, and gazing hard at the picture on his easel--'it's too strong.' Madame de Pastourelles gave a little shiver.
The big bare room, with its Northern aspect and its smouldering fire, had been of a polar temperature this March afternoon.

She had been sitting for an hour and a half.

Her hands and feet were frozen, and the fur cloak which she wore over her white dress had to be thrown back for the convenience of the painter, who was at work on the velvet folds.
Meanwhile, on the further side of the room sat 'propriety'-- also shivering--an elderly governess of the Findon family, busily knitting.
'The dress is coming!' said Fenwick, after another minute or two.
'Yes, it's coming.' And with a flushed face and dishevelled hair he stood back again, staring first at his canvas and then at his sitter.
Madame de Pastourelles sat as still as she could, her thin, numbed fingers lightly crossed on her lap.

Her wonderful velvet dress, of ivory-white, fell about her austerely in long folds, which, as they bent or overlapped, made beautiful convolutions, firm yet subtle, on the side turned towards the painter, and over her feet.

The classical head, with its small ear, the pale yet shining face, combined with the dress to suggest a study in ivory, wrought to a great delicacy and purity.