Whilst we had talked I had closed the door, and now I crossed over to my picture and began to work again. She still lingered, watching me whilst I painted.
'Are you fond of pictures?' I asked her, to divert her thoughts.
'I have not seen many, but I am very fond of some of them.'
'Would you like to look at those?' I said, pointing with my brush to a portfolio on the piano.
She opened the portfolio and looked through my sketches. I saw with pleasure that she did not race over them, but that she stopped and looked long at some. I could see from where I stood that they were the best, and I said, 'The young lady has taste and discernment.'
Suddenly she clapped her two hands together, and said--
Then she came to me with a sketch in her hands, and her face was beautiful.
'Yes, mademoiselle, I painted that. Why do you ask?'
'Poor old place!' she said very softly, without knowing that she said it at all.
It was a picturesque old house in Surrey. The house stood in a hollow, and the road wound up past it on to a long rolling wold. (That is the beautiful word your poet Tennyson uses. The country-people, the peasantry, use it also.) She had cried so much that her eyes were ready for tears again at almost anything. When she looked at me they were brim-full, but they did not run over.
'We lived here with papa,' she said, 'till he died.'
Then two big tears brimmed over and ran down. I committed an indiscretion: I was sorry for her, and I kissed her. She drew away with much dignity and said--
'I have stayed too long. Good morning, signor.'
I blushed. She was so much a child, and I feel myself so old, that I had not thought it any indiscretion. And now I remember that I have been writing of her as a child. She is quite a grown girl--a young lady. She is perhaps more than seventeen years of age. I was a brute beast--an insensate--to frighten her. Before I could say anything she was gone.
I abused myself in my vehement Continental way, and then I began to work. The picture was but little hurt, and before daylight was over it was almost repaired. But I had heard the clock strike seven, and my estimable uncle round the corner retires at that hour into the country, and will have no business again until nine o'clock in the morning. So, to prevent myself from thinking too much of the coffee and the tobacco and the loaf, I sat down to my piano and played. One would have thought that my sitting down to play was a signal, for I had scarcely begun when my landlady tapped at my door and brought a note. She looked shyly at the picture, and hoped it had not suffered much. I told her gaily that it was all the better for the accident, as in reality it was. Then I read my note.