“Indeed!” said Olive, smiling, for the little old maid was as brave as a lion among these gloomiest of all gloomy lanes, familiar to her even in dark nights, and this was a sunny spring morning.
“I am not going to see an ordinary poor person, but that Quadroon woman—Mrs. Manners, who is one of my brother's models sometimes—you know her?”
“Scarcely; but I have seen her pass through the hall. Oh, she was a grand, beautiful woman, like an Eastern queen. You remember it was she from whom Mr. Vanbrugh painted the 'Cleopatra.' What an eye she had, and what a glorious mouth!” cried Olive, waxing enthusiastic.
“Poor thing! Her beauty is sadly wasting now,” said Meliora. “She seems to be slowly dying, and I shouldn't wonder if it were of sheer starvation; those models earn so little. Yesterday she fainted as she stood—Michael is so thoughtless. He had to call me to give her some wine, and then we sent the maid home with her. She lives in a poor place, Hannah says, but quite decent and respectable. I shall surely go and see the poor creature; but she looks such a desperate sort of woman, her eyes glare quite ferociously sometimes. She might be angry—so I had rather not be alone, if you will come, Miss Rothesay?”
Olive consented at once; there was in her a certain romance which, putting all sympathy aside, quite gloried in such an adventure.
They walked for a mile or two until they reached a miserable street by the river-side; but Miss Meliora had forgotten the number. They must have returned, their quest unsatisfied, had not Olive seen a little girl leaning out of an upper window,—her ragged elbows on the sill, her elf-like black eyes watching the boats up and down the Thames.
“I know that child,” Olive said; “it is the poor woman's. She left it in the hall one day at Woodford Cottage, and I noticed it from its black eyes and fair hair. I remember, too—for I asked—its singular and very pretty name, Christal.”
Talking thus, they mounted the rickety staircase, and inquired for Mrs. Manners. The door of the room was flung open from without, with a noise that would have broken any torpor less deep than that into which its wretched occupant had fallen.
“Ma mie is asleep; don't wake her or she'll scold,” said Christal jumping down from the window, and interposing between Miss Vanbrugh and the woman who was called Mrs. Manners.
She was indeed a very beautiful woman, though her beauty was on a grand scale. She had flung herself, half-dressed, upon what seemed a heap of straw, with a blanket thrown over. As she lay there, sleeping heavily, her arm tossed above her head, the large but perfect proportions of her form reminded Olive of the reclining figure in the group of the “Three Fates.”