It seemed to him that his brightest conceptions of the beautiful, his dreamy fashionings of a faultless ideal, combined with all his native and his acquired skill, had never yet enabled him to realise “a thing of beauty” to rival the perfect excellence and marvellous charms of that young face upon which his eager eyes were now fastened.
Raphael, in his rarest art-performance had not in his belief attained the sentiment of angelic purity beaming in her features, nor had Carlo Dolci, in the loveliest Madonna he ever painted, anticipated it.
Motionless he stood, and with suspended breath gazed upon her as though she were one lone bright star, shining unaccompanied in the vast field of the deep blue heavens, in the silent night, his mind the while lost in a maze of rapture and of wonder.
And now he had a consciousness that a saddening gloom overspread the earth far and near. What made the surrounding space in a moment so sombre? Had a huge cloud suddenly sprung up from its sullen rest, and spreading itself enviously over the broad sky, absorbed the sunlight? Was the sunshine which had converted smoky London into a city of golden palaces abruptly withdrawn? No! sunbeams yet glanced upon the buildings, and danced upon the rippling waters, but the young maiden had disappeared from her window. She had suddenly fled from it, as a startled fawn would spring into a covert at the sound of the approaching footsteps of a hunter bent upon its destruction.
So, though the sunshine was as brilliant as before--the whole universe, in the eyes of Harry Vivian, the young goldsmith, seemed plunged into a profound and solemn gloom--for she was no longer where he yet gazed.
He felt oppressed in this glittering sunshine, which had no light for him, and he drew towards the outer door, that in the free fresh air he might breathe more freely. As he gained the threshold, he started, and an exclamation of surprise escaped his lips.
Opposite, at the door of the house in which dwelt the young girl upon whom his eyes had gazed so fondly, stood a man who in costume and manner was the reverse of prepossessing. Who was he, and what could he want there? were questions which Harry at once put to himself. He had come on business--most disagreeable business--that was beyond a doubt, for there was nothing either in his garb or in his manner which betrayed the idle visitor. Harry, therefore, conceived it to be his especial duty--with rather questionable propriety, however--to observe his movements.