“We will go and look at that 'Tentation de St. Antoine' of Teniers,” she said, “and we may hear them speak. I confess I am devoured by an anxiety to hear them speak.”
According, a few moments later an amiable young couple stood before “La Tentation,” regarding it with absorbed and critical glances.
But the father and daughter did not seem to see us. They looked disconsolately about them, or at the picture before which they sat. Finally, however, we were rewarded by hearing them speak to each other. The father addressed the young lady slowly and deliberately, and with an accent which, but for my long residence in England and familiarity with some forms of its patois, I should find it impossible to transcribe.
“Esmeraldy,” he said, “your ma's a long time acomin'.”
“Yes,” answered the girl, with the same accent, and in a voice wholly listless and melancholy, “she's a long time.”
Clélie favored me with one of her rapid side glances. The study of character is her grand passion, and her special weakness is a fancy for the singular and incongruous. I have seen her stand in silence, and regard with positive interest one of her former patronesses who was overwhelming her with contumelious violence, seeming entirely unconscious of all else but that the woman was of a species novel to her, and therefore worthy of delicate observation.
“It is as I said,” she whispered. “They are Americans, but of an order entirely new.”
Almost the next instant she touched my arm.
“Here is the mother!” she exclaimed. “She is coming this way. See!”
A woman advanced rapidly toward our part of the gallery,—a small, angry woman, with an un graceful figure, and a keen brown eye. She began to speak aloud while still several feet distant from the waiting couple.