“Poor fellow!” mutters the painter, with a little shudder. “In Hispaniola! That’s a long way off.”
“Not for an English sailor. Seven years ago Dick and I, full of youth and ardor, sailed with Captain Ned Lovell to the Spanish Main, and traded there with the Dons of Hispaniola, and as we were Catholics, lived quite comfortably in the town of Haytien, accumulating wealth. Then I, with my doubloons and pieces [[55]]of eight, returned to merry England, leaving Dick to turn the rest of our merchandise into gold and follow after. A year passed. Then no Dick; but word was brought me by Hawkins coming back from his third voyage, that Dick had fallen in love with a Spanish girl; that his rivals, for revenge, had denounced him as an English heretic, and the—the Inquisition—.” The Englishman’s voice is broken, there are tears in his eyes, though they burn fiercely. “Then I was ready to hate the Spaniards and do Queen Elizabeth’s work,” mutters Guy, after a moment’s pause, “the work that gave me this miniature.”
“Can you tell me,” he says suddenly, producing the likeness, on ivory set with diamonds, “the name and title of the lady whose face is here?”
“Oho!” chuckles the painter, a twinkle in his eye, “I had been expecting some such question ever since you told me about the lady of the barge. Did she give you this? Has she also been smitten by Cupid’s dart?”
“What do you mean?” growls the Englishman, blushes showing beneath his sun-burned skin.
“I mean,” laughs Antony, “that you are a man very deeply in love. In your tale of last night every time you mentioned the ‘divinity of the barge,’ the ‘fair unknown,’ the ‘graceful creature of the shadow,’ the ‘fairy-like form the gloom could not conceal,’ the ‘voice soft as an angel’s,’ your manner betrayed that even the darkness had not prevented your falling in love with the lady you rescued from our Sea Beggars; that though she had been your captive, you really were hers. Did she reciprocate enough to give you this?”
“No,” returns Guy, “I believe I’ve been in love with this picture ever since I captured it three years ago.”
This answer astounds the painter. He murmurs: “I never supposed you English a romantic race, but you prove to me that the Italians are as beggars to you islanders in impetuous passion. In love with a picture?”
“Yes, it came to me under peculiar circumstances,” answers the Englishman, a little sulkily perhaps, for the artist’s tone is somewhat bantering. “Towards the end of ’68 I was playing tennis in a London court. Elizabeth of England and her prime minister, Sir William [[56]]Cecil, now Lord Burleigh, sent for me. The Queen’s exchequer was empty. Five Italian vessels bearing a loan from the bankers of Genoa to Alva, and loaded with eight hundred thousand crowns in silver, on their way to Antwerp—”
“Yes,” interjects the other with a chuckle, “I know—the money with which the Duke intended to pay his troops—”