“Well I never. A resolute chin.”
Denys. “The darling!”
“And now comes the rub. When you told me she was—the way she is, it gave me a shock; I dropped my brushes. Was I going to turn a girl, that couldn't keep her lover at a distance, into the Virgin Mary, at my time of life? I love the poor ninny still. But I adore our blessed Lady. Say you, 'a painter must not be peevish in such matters'? Well, most painters are men; and men are fine fellows. They can do aught. Their saints and virgins are neither more nor less than their lemans, saving your presence. But know that for this very reason half their craft is lost on me, which find beneath their angels' white wings the very trollops I have seen flaunting it on the streets, bejewelled like Paynim idols, and put on like the queens in a pack o' cards. And I am not a fine fellow, but only a woman, and my painting is but one half craft, and t'other half devotion. So now you may read me. 'Twas foolish, maybe, but I could not help it; yet am I sorry.” And the old lady ended despondently a discourse which she had commenced in a'mighty defiant tone.
“Well, you know, dame,” observed Catherine, “you must think it would go to the poor girl's heart, and she so fond of ye?”
Margaret Van Eyck only sighed.
The Frisian girl, after biting her lips impatiently a little while, turned upon Catherine. “Why, dame, think you 'twas for that alone Margaret and Peter hath left Sevenbergen? Nay.”
“For what else, then?”
“What else? Why, because Gerard's people slight her so cruel. Who would bide among hard-hearted folk that ha' driven her lad t' Italy, and now he is gone, relent not, but face it out, and ne'er come anigh her that is left?”
“Reicht, I was going.”
“Oh, ay, going, and going, and going. Ye should ha' said less or else done more. But with your words you did uplift her heart and let it down wi' your deeds. 'They have never been,' said the poor thing to me, with such a sigh. Ay, here is one can feel for her: for I too am far from my friends, and often, when first I came to Holland, I did used to take a hearty cry all to myself. But ten times liever would I be Reicht Heynes with nought but the leagues atw'een me and all my kith, than be as she is i' the midst of them that ought to warm to her, and yet to fare as lonesome as I.”