Next morning my mother said to me: “Wasn’t it a wonderful evening? I think Richard is delightful.”

“Yes,” I said. “He is very thoughtful.”

“It was so good of him to plan the opera. He said it was Traviata that made him determined to go…your being Violetta, of course.”

“The similarity ends with the name, as Edward pointed out.”

“I should hope so,” said my mother. “I should hate to think of you leading that sort of life and fading away before your time.”

I laughed and she said: “Do you know what is coming up soon? I’d almost forgotten it with all this excitement about the baby. Your birthday.”

“Of course…next month. I haven’t got Dorabella’s present yet.”

“Nor I. What would you like?”

“I’ll have to think.”

“We’ll get it while we are in London. We’ll go and look tomorrow. But think about it.”

“I will.”

There was a dinner party that night. The Dorringtons had invited a lawyer and his wife with their newly married daughter and her husband.

The conversation at dinner was mainly about the situation in Europe. The elderly lawyer said he did not like the way things were going.

“The alliance between the Italian and German dictators is an unholy one, I reckon,” he said.

“We should not have stood by while Italy took Abyssinia,” said Richard.

“What could we have done?” asked Edward. “Did we want to go to war?”

“If all the states of Europe with America had stood together against it and imposed sanctions, Mussolini could not have gone on.”

“Too late now,” said the lawyer.

I glanced at Gretchen. She was looking uneasy, as she always did when the politics of Europe were discussed. I wished they would change the subject.

They eventually did, but I think the evening was spoiled for Gretchen.

The next morning Mary Grace said she had something to show me. I went to her room. Laid out on a table was the miniature.

Mary Grace pointed at it and stepped back, looking away as though she could not face my reaction.

I stared at it. It was beautiful. The colors were soft and exquisitely blended. It was my face, but there was something there, something arresting. It was a look in the eyes, as though I were trying to prove something which I could not understand. The mouth was smiling and seemed to belie that expression in the eyes.

I could not believe that she had created such an exquisite piece of work. I turned to her in wonder and she forced herself to look at me.

“You don’t…like it,” she stammered.

“I don’t know what to say. You are a true artist, Mary Grace. Why have you kept this hidden?”

She looked bemused.

“I think it is wonderful. It really is. Everything on such a small scale and yet…it’s there, isn’t it? It is the sort of portrait which makes one pause and wonder what is behind that smile. What is she thinking?”

Did I really look like that? What had I been thinking of when I sat for Mary Grace? That subject, which was always uppermost in my mind? Dorabella and Dermot…their marriage…Mrs. Pardell who did not believe that her daughter had died as it was said she had…that sly old man who was watching us all the time as though we were spiders in a basin from which we could not escape. Those were the thoughts which had dominated my mind as I sat there.

I looked at Mary Grace in wonder. Her talent really did amaze me.

I said severely, trying to introduce a light note, for she looked very emotional: “Mary Grace, you have been hiding your light under a bushel. Have you heard of the Parable of the Talents? You have been given this talent and you have hidden it away. If you have such talent you must surely use it.”

“I can’t believe…”

“You have to believe in yourself. I am going to buy this miniature from you. I am your first client.”

“No…no…I shall give it to you.”

“I shall not accept it as a gift, but I very much want it and will have it. Listen. You have solved a problem for me. It is my sister’s birthday in October—mine also. I have been wondering what I am going to give her. Now I know. I can’t accept a gift from you which I am going to give to someone else. This is a blessing. She does not see me so often now, though we were always together until she married. This will be the ideal birthday present. You and I will go out and buy a beautiful frame for it, and that shall be my birthday gift to her. She will love it. It is beautiful and it will be so unexpected. Oh, Mary Grace, thank you so much. You have made a beautiful picture of me and at the same time solved my problem.”

She was staring at me, her lips parted in sheer astonishment.

“My dear Mary Grace,” I cried. “You look piskymazed, as they say in Cornwall.”

I carried her along on my enthusiasm. She was a most unusual artist. The few I had met had an inflated idea of their own excellence and a word of criticism could make an enemy for life. Mary Grace was modest and genuinely surprised. She was that rare creature—a good artist and a modest one.

I was already imagining Dorabella’s face when she saw the miniature. She would surely want one of herself. A commission for Mary Grace, I thought delightedly.

Mary Grace and I announced that we were going shopping that morning. There were certain things we wanted to get. We took the miniature with us and went to a jeweler’s shop in the High Street. I had noticed it before because there were several unusual pieces in the window—secondhand, some of them, rare and beautiful.

A bell tinkled over the door as I pushed it open and we went in. An elderly man came toward us to stand behind the counter.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“We want a frame—a small frame—to fit this.” I laid the miniature on the table.

He looked intently at the miniature and smiled at me.

“Very nice,” he said. “An excellent likeness.”

I glanced sideways at Mary Grace, who was blushing.

“Have you anything?” I asked.

“It has to be small,” he said. “There are not too many of this size around. Small and oval-shaped, of course. Most frames are the more conventional types. A piece of work like that needs something special, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it is going to be a present.”

“It’s lovely.” He was thoughtful. “A pair of silver frames came in the other day. Excuse me a moment. Thomas,” he called.

A man appeared. He was considerably younger than the one who was serving us.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

“What about those frames that came in the other day…with the Marlon lot.”

“Do you mean those small silver ones, sir?”

“Yes. They’d take a picture like this, would they?”

The man came and looked down at the miniature.

“Beautiful,” he said, smiling at me. “You’d want something really nice for that.”

“Can you put your hands on those frames, Thomas?”

“I reckon so, sir.”

The older man turned to us. “They came in only the other day. We haven’t had much chance to look at all the stuff that came with them yet. Secondhand, you know. From a sale of one of the stately homes. Been in the family for years, then someone dies and everything’s up for sale.”

He chatted awhile until Thomas appeared with the frames.

They were beautiful.

“They’d be some two hundred years old,” we were told. “They knew how to make things in those days. Craftsmen. We could do with more of them nowadays. Well, I reckon we could make that picture fit. Trouble is, they’re a pair.”

I had an inspiration. “It might be that we should want the other one as well,” I said. For if Dorabella wanted a miniature of herself to match mine, the frames should be similar.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I am not quite sure about the other one.”

“Well, you could take the one and let me know, eh? I’ll put it on one side for a while—say to the end of October? After that I’d let it go. They should go together, of course, but as it fits…”