“I mean,” said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, “that the young girl did NOT run away from the painter, and that he had neither the right nor the cause to believe her faithless or attribute his misfortunes to her.” She hesitated, not from any sense of her indiscretion, but to recover from a momentary doubt if the girl were really her own self—but only for a moment.
“Then you knew the painter, as I did?” he said in astonishment.
“Not as YOU did,” responded Helen. She drew nearer the picture, and, pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:—
“Do you see that small window with the mignonette?”
“Perfectly.”
“That was MY room. His was opposite. He told me so when I first saw the sketch. I am the girl you speak of, for he knew no other, and I believe him to have been a truthful, honorable man.”
“But what were you doing there? Surely you are joking?” said Sir James, with a forced smile.
“I was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could afford to live.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”