“From the artist?” continued Helen, in a slightly constrained voice.
“No,” said Sir James, “although I knew the poor chap well enough. You can easily see that he was once a painter of great promise. I rather think it was stolen from him while he was in hospital by those incendiary wretches. I recognized it, however, and bought for a few francs from them what I would have paid HIM a thousand for.”
“In hospital?” repeated Helen dazedly.
“Yes,” said Sir James. “The fact is it was the ending of the usual Bohemian artist's life. Though in this case the man was a real artist,—and I believe, by the way, was a countryman of yours.”
“In hospital?” again repeated Helen. “Then he was poor?”
“Reckless, I should rather say; he threw himself into the fighting before Paris and was badly wounded. But it was all the result of the usual love affair—the girl, they say, ran off with the usual richer man. At all events, it ruined him for painting; he never did anything worth having afterwards.”
“And now?” said Helen in the same unmoved voice.
Sir James shrugged his shoulders. “He disappeared. Probably he'll turn up some day on the London pavement—with chalks. That sketch, by the way, was one that had always attracted me to his studio—though he never would part with it. I rather fancy, don't you know, that the girl had something to do with it. It's a wonderfully realistic sketch, don't you see; and I shouldn't wonder if it was the girl herself who lived behind one of those queer little windows in the roof there.”
“She did live there,” said Helen in a low voice.
Sir James uttered a vague laugh. Helen looked around her. The duchess had quietly and unostentatiously passed into the library, and in full view, though out of hearing, was examining, with her glass to her eye, some books upon the shelves.