“Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy.”
“You look deep,” said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady’s face with strongly awakened interest. “You see more perhaps than the painter intended.”
“No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that girl’s face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a great hope.”
The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. “You believe in great hopes,” said he.
The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost beautiful. “What would life be without them?” she answered.
“True,” returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how thoroughly bright and self-possessed.
“Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions,” thought he; “I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as this.” And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his usually melancholy countenance.
Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor beneath my lady’s picture.
“I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona,” her husband remarked.
“O, it was an occasion of triumph to me,” she murmured. “It is the first time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, mon cher.”