Читать книгу Sister Teresa онлайн

54 страница из 85

At last the first of Evelyn's pictures was hoisted on the easel.

(p. 038) "Good God! isn't it a miserable sight seeing her pictures going to whomsoever cares to bid a few pounds. But if I were to buy the whole collection——"

"I quite understand, and every one is a piece of your life."

The pictures continued to go by.

"I can't stand this much longer."

"Hush!"

The Boucher drawing went up. It was turned to the right and to the left: a beautiful girl lying on her belly, her legs parted slightly. Therefore the bidding began briskly, but for some unaccountable reason it died away. "Somebody must have declared it to be a forgery," Owen whispered to Harding, and a moment after it became Harding's property for eighty-seven pounds—"The exact sum I paid for it years ago. How very extraordinary!"

"A portrait by Manet—a hundred pounds offered, one hundred," and two grey eyes in a face of stone searched the room for bidders. "One hundred pounds offered, five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty," and so on to two hundred.