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The Daughter Pays. Mrs. Baillie Reynolds
Читать онлайн.Название The Daughter Pays
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isbn 4057664563774
Автор произведения Mrs. Baillie Reynolds
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
Baillie Mrs. Reynolds
The Daughter Pays
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4057664563774
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
THE MAN IN THE GALLERY
"Yes, I have felt like some deserted world That God hath done with, and had cast aside Untilled, no use, no pleasure, not desired ... Could such a world have hope that, some blest day, God would remember her, and fashion her Anew?"—Jean Ingelow.
The full sunshine of late June, tempered by the medium of London atmosphere, illumined the long extent of Gallery Number Sixteen at Hertford House.
It was a pay-day, and there were, in consequence, but few visitors. The expanse of polished floor glimmered with a suggestion of coolness, a hint of ice; and the summer light touched with brilliance the rich colour on the walls, the mellow harmonies of the bits of old furniture ranged below.
The space and solitude, the silence and sunlight, emphasised and threw into strong relief the figures of two girls, deep in contemplation before the portrait of Isabella, wife of Paul de Vos.
Though these were modern, even ultra-modern, Nattier and Boucher, great interpreters of an artificial age, might have hailed them as kindred spirits. They seemed eloquent of all that luxury could produce in the way of exotic perfection. But for the absence of rouge and powder, they were as far removed from the dingy, the commonplace, or the underbred, as any pre-Revolution marquise, smiling from the windows of her château upon a world dark with misery, convulsed with pain, and all unconscious of its very existence.
Far indeed from these hot-house blooms seemed the seamy side. They were of those who feed on the roses and lie in the lilies of life. They belonged to the class which a novelist of our own day has so happily described as expensive. They were the fine flower of our epoch, and unconscious of their own supreme selfishness.
One was of the petite type, gipsy brown and captivating, from the tip of her plumes to the shoes and stockings which matched her gown, and upon whose buckles the light winked. The other was taller and more willowy. She was not big, but formed with the lithe grace of the modern Atalanta. Something in the veiled loveliness of her soft eye suggested a dove. Her hair was fair, and her face, wide across the brows, and tapering at the chin, seemed designed to make an involuntary appeal to the heartstrings of any man who looked at her. Every movement of this girl was graceful. Yet one would have felt certain that her grace was unstudied; she was not self-conscious; her attentions seemed entirely absorbed by the beauty of the paintings at which she gazed.
Thus she stood, her chin uplifted; and a man who entered, with halting step, from Gallery Fifteen, shot a keen glance and stopped short.
He was not a young man, and his dress, for London, was negligent; whilst his long black moustache gave him a slightly out-of-date, or provincial, aspect. His black hair showed some grey at the temples, but he appeared to be in vigorous health.
For some long moments he stood in absorbed contemplation of the girlish figure isolated against the dim, dignified background of the gallery: and as he gazed there crept into his face an expression which made it almost devilish. Every feature hardened—the mouth took on a sneer, the eyes glowed with some concentration of feeling which altered his whole face for the worse.
As yet unconscious of his presence, the girl gazed on; and after a minute her smaller, darker friend strolled up and joined her. She said something that