And all too little to atone
For knowing what should ne’er be known.
Scott.
The season at Saratoga was not yet over, the travellers were told at New York, though people were fast thronging back into “the city.” Should they go on thither at once, or try to find the photographer nearer at hand? It was on a Friday that they landed, and they resolved to wait till Monday, Jock thinking that a rest would be better for his mother.
The early autumn sun glowed on the broad streets as they walked slowly through them, halting to examine narrowly every display of portraits at a photographer’s door.
It was a right course; they came upon some exquisitely-finished ones, among which they detected unmistakably the coloured likeness of Elvira de Menella. They went into the studio and asked to look at it. “Ah, many ask that,” they were told, “though the sensation was a little gone by.”
“What sensation?” Jock asked, while his mother trembled so much that she had to sit down on one of the velvet chairs.
“I guess you are a stranger, sir, from England? Then no doubt you have not heard of the great event of the season at Saratoga, the sudden elopement of this young lady, a beautiful English heiress, on the eve of marriage, these very portraits ordered for the bridesmaids’ lockets.”
“Whom did she elope with?” asked Jock.
“That’s the remarkable part of it, sir. Some say that she was claimed in secret by a lover to whom she had been long much attached; but we are better informed. I can state to a certainty that she only fled to escape the tyranny of an aunt. She need only have appealed to the institutions of the country.”
“Very true,” said Jock. “Let me ask if your informant was not the lady who coloured this photograph, Mrs. Harte?” “Yes.” “And is she here?”
“No, sir,” with some hesitation.