She put the coat upon the lay-figure in her studio; it affected her strangely, and she stood there now, with her hand placed upon the shoulder of the figure.
"What are we, judged by our most secret thoughts?" had Eric written, and it seemed now as if the words came from the mouth of the model before her.
Bella shuddered, and was seized with a deadly trembling, for as she stood there with her gaze fastened upon the floor, and her hand laid upon the garment of the man not her husband, it seemed to her as if she should sink to the earth. At this instant, her whole life unfolded itself to her view.
The days of childhood—there was no definite image of these. The teachers praised her quick comprehension; a French bonne was dismissed, and a strict English governess received into the family; Bella learned languages easily, and good manners seemed natural to her. Her smart repartees, when she was very young, were repeated admiringly, and this flattered her vanity, and extinguished all childish ingenuousness.
Ladies and gentlemen visiting the house, or meeting her casually in different places, praised her beauty in her hearing. She was confirmed, but the holy ceremony appeared to her only as the sign of her deliverance from the nursery, when she must lay aside her short dresses and put on long ones; and when going up to the altar, the thought which predominated in her was, Thou art the fairest one. As the bishop had taken tea the evening before with her parents, he was not to her a supernatural being as to the rest, for he had spoken familiarly with her, and she appeared to herself to be, in the church, the central point of all observation.
Her father yielded to her wishes, and Bella, at fourteen years of age, was introduced the next winter into society. She made a brilliant appearance, and was much courted; everybody spoke with admiration of the air of fresh youth that hovered around her. But she early exhibited a sort of coldness, so that she was nicknamed the mer-maiden, and in her eye there was what might be called a cold fire. Even the reigning Prince singled her out. She still kept the engagement-card of her first court-ball as a sacred relic, and with it a withered bouquet.
Now followed an unbroken chain of homage and attention. Bella, with her ready and apt replies, was the life of the circle in which she moved. While yet a child, her beauty had been praised in her own hearing, and now that she was a woman, her remarkable mental powers were extolled, either directly or indirectly, so that she was sure to be informed of it. Her striking remarks and keen criticisms were quoted, and her witticisms passed around. In this way she had acquired the reputation of great knowledge, which, with her spirited piano playing, and above all, her skill in painting, caused her to be regarded as a social wonder, and to be held up as a pattern to many a young girl who came out after her in society.
Before she was sixteen, she had refused many offers of marriage, and she smiled when she heard of the betrothal of one and another, for she could say, You could have married this man, if you had wished to. Her mother would have been glad to have her married young, but her father was not willing that his child should be separated from him so early; he hoped that some prince of the collateral branch would unite himself with her in marriage.
Her seventeenth birthday was ushered in by a morning serenade from the band of the Guards, and congratulations poured in from all sides; but if she could have been seen then, as the tones of the music awakened her from sleep, and a new thought stirred within her, her large eyes would have presented a look different from any ever seen in them before. The thought was, I have no belief in love. All this singing and talking of the power of love is nonsensical romance! Her mother's teaching had contributed not a little to produce this conviction; she had early uprooted the influences of love, perpetually representing to her daughter that the main thing was, to make a brilliant match; and Bella, in fact, had never loved any one, for she insisted upon the submission of him towards whom she felt any preference. From one of her mother's cousins she heard suggestions of an opposite nature; she frequently said, half satirically and half seriously, that the only right love was that directed towards a man of a lower condition. If you should love the artist in whose studio you work, or your teacher of music or of language, that would be genuine love. But it seemed to Bella as if any special attachment to a teacher was like entertaining a love for a livery-servant, or even for a being of a different species, and choosing him for a husband.
On that seventeenth birthday, there was perceptible, for the first time, that cold, glassy, Medusa-look, which regarded men with indifference, as if they were nothing but shadows; but no one remarked it, and it seemed as if on that day something was paralyzed within her which would never again feel the stirrings of life.