"I am very sorry, indeed, but Sir Thomas and my aunt are not at home. They had no intention of leaving home when I went out for my ride, but they have been gone for some time." She looked towards a servant who stood near, and added: "I am so sorry; nothing would have given my uncle more pleasure; but if you will allow me, I will send--"
George interrupted her, but with perfect politeness.
"Thank you very much, but, if you will allow me, I will take my leave, and hope to profit by Sir Thomas Boldero's kindness on a future occasion." He bowed deeply, and was turning away, when, seeing that she looked really distressed, he hesitated.
"I will show you the pictures myself, if you will come with me," she said, in a tone so frank, so kindly and engaging, that the sternest critic of manners in existence, supposing that critic to have been any other than an old maid, could not have condemned the spontaneous courtesy as forwardness. "I am an indifferent substitute for my uncle, as a cicerone, but I think I know the names of all the artists, and where all the pictures came from. Stephen,"--she spoke now to the servant,--"I am going to take this gentleman through the picture-gallery; go on before us if you please."
So George Dallas and Clare Carruthers entered the house together, and lingered over the old carvings in the hall, over their inspection of the sporting pictures which adorned it, and the dining-room, over the family portraits in the vestibule, the old china vases, and the rococo furniture. Every subject had an interest for them, and they did not think of asking themselves in what that interest originated and consisted. The girl did not know the young man's name, but his voice was full of the charm of sweet music for her, and in his face her fancy read strange and beautiful things. He was an artist, she knew already, which in sober language meant that she had seen a very tolerable sketch which he had made. He was a poet, she felt quite convinced; for did he not quote Tennyson, and Keats, and Coleridge, and even Herrick and Herbert, as they wandered among the really fine and valuable paintings which formed Sir Thomas Boldero's collection, so aptly and with such deep feeling and appreciation as could spring only from a poetic soul?
It was the old story, which has never been truly told, which shall never cease in the telling. Both were young, and one was beautiful; and though the present is an age which mocks at love at first sight, and indeed regards love at all, under any circumstances, with only decent toleration, not by any means amounting to favour, it actually witnesses it sometimes. The young man and the girl--the idle, dissolute, perverted young man; the beautiful, pure, innocent, proud, pious young girl--talked together that spring afternoon, as the hours wore on to evening, of art, of literature, of music, of travel, of the countless things over which their fancy rambled, and which had wondrous charms for her bright intellect and her secluded life, simple and ignorant in the midst of its luxury and refinement. All that was best and noblest in George's mind came out at the gentle bidding of the voice that sounded for him with a new, undreamed-of music; and the hard, cold, wicked world in which he lived, in which hitherto, with rare intervals of better impulses, he had taken delight, fell away from him, and was forgotten. The girl's grace and beauty, refinement and gentleness, were not more conspicuous than her bright intelligence and taste, cultivated, not indeed by travel or society, but by extensive and varied reading. Such was the influence which minute after minute was gaining upon George. And for her? Her fancy was busily at work too. She loved art; it filled her with wonder and reverence. Here was an artist, a young and handsome artist, of unexceptionable manners. She adored poetry, regarding it as a divine gift; and here was a poet--yes, a poet; for she had made Dallas confess that he very often wrote "verses;" but that was his modesty: she knew he wrote poetry--beautiful poetry. Would he ever let her see any of it?
"Yes, certainly," he had answered; "when I am famous, and there is a brisk competition for me among the publishers, I will send a copy of my poems to you."
"To me! But you do not know my name."
"O yes, I do. You are Miss Carruthers."
"I am; but who told you?"