"For an uncultivated young rustic, I must say your appreciation of fine painting is rather surprising. Few city girls would have paid such a tearful tribute of heartfelt admiration to my pretty 'Mona Lisa.'"
Without removing her fascinated eyes she asked:
"When did it come?"
"I have had it several days. I presume that you know it is a copy of Da Vinci's celebrated picture, upon which he worked four years, and which now hangs in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris?"
She merely shook her head.
"In France it is called 'La Joconde; but I prefer the softer 'Mona
Lisa' for my treasure."
"Is it not mine? She must have sent it to me?"
"She? Are you dreaming? Mona Lisa has been dead three hundred years!"
"Mr. Palma, it is my mother. No other face ever looked like that, no other eyes except those in the Mater Dolorosa resemble these beautiful sad brown eyes, that rained their tears upon my head. Do you think a child ever mistook another for her own mother? Can the face I first learned to know and to love, the lovely—oh! how lovely—face that bent over my cradle ever—ever be forgotten? If I never saw her again in this world, could I fail to recognise her in heaven? My own mother!"
"Obstinate, infatuated little ignoramus! Read—and be convinced."