"Or?"
"Or anyone else one thought particularly well of," and Pauline gave her sister an appreciative smile.
Then May, usually rather unsusceptible to such quiet demonstrations of affection, put her hand in her sister's and said: "Pauline, you are a good deal of a dear!" and there was a certain bright sweetness in the young girl's face that caused Pauline to think of the dawn, and of what a perfect hour it was,—and that there was never any hurry about the sunrise.
They spent an hour, catalogue in hand, among the less important pictures, while Uncle Dan amused himself with some old engravings, and then, having earned their reward, the two girls strolled back to the great saloons, where nothing less splendid than Tintoretto and Veronese makes its appeal to the conscience of the sight-seer.
Pauline descended the steps to the main entrance hall, from which one has the best view of Titian's Assumption. She seated herself on the broad divan, and looked up through the arched doorway to the glorious soaring figure, that seems, not up-borne by the floating cloud of cherubs and angels, but rather drawing all that buoyant throng upward in its marvellous flight. Geoffry Daymond, pausing at the top of the short flight of steps a few minutes later, face to face with Pauline, fancied that he discovered a subtle kinship between her countenance and the pictured one; and then, as he turned to compare them, he unhesitatingly gave his preference to the girl of the nineteenth century, with the rare, sylvan face and the uplifted look. As she became aware of his approach a lovely colour stole into her face, and there was a welcome in her eyes which she was too sincere to deny.
"We wondered whether we should find you here this rainy morning," she said, as he came toward her down the steps; and she spoke with such quiet composure that a sudden leaping emotion that had stirred him was checked midway.
"I was looking for you," he replied. "We came across the Colonel and he told us you were here."
"We always come here when it rains, because the light is so good," Pauline observed, wondering that she could think of nothing better to say.
"Yes; I know it. I passed your sister just now, standing with her back to the world at large, studying a Tintoretto portrait."
"May really understands a good deal about pictures," Pauline remarked, still wondering that nothing but platitudes would come to her lips. She had left her seat, and they were moving toward the steps.