"Sold it!"
"Yes. Does it surprise you?"
"No; I can't say that it does. I am glad, though, that it will stay in the country. It's by far the best thing you or anybody else has done this season. I was afraid she would take it back with her. Poor woman! she has had a hard life, and it doesn't seem to get any better, from what I hear."
"You know the original, then, my dear?" asked Richard, holding out his second cup of tea for another lump of sugar, which Margaret in her excitement had forgotten. He and Nathan had listened with the keenest interest to the reading of John Grant's letter and to the discussion that had followed.
"I know OF her," answered Margaret as she dropped it in; "and she knows me, but I've never met her. She's a Pole, and something of a painter, too. She studied in the same atelier where I was, but that was before I went to Paris. Her husband became mixed up in some political conspiracy and was sent to Siberia, and she was put across the frontier that same night. She is very popular in Paris; they all like her, especially the painters. There is nothing against her except her poverty." There could be nothing against any woman in Margaret's eyes. "But for her jewels she would have had as hard a time to get on as the rest of us. Now and then she parts with one of her pearls, and between times she teaches music. You must see the picture Oliver painted of her—it will delight you."
"Oh, but I have!" exclaimed Richard, laying down his cup. "We looked at it as we came up. It is really a great picture. He tells me it is the work of two hours and under gas-light."
"No, not altogether, father. I had a few hours on it the next day," interrupted Oliver.
"Strong, isn't it?" continued Margaret, without noticing Oliver's explanation. "It is really better in many ways than the girl in the Tam-o'-Shanter cap—the one he painted of me. That had some of Lely's qualities about it, especially in the flesh tones. He always tells me the inspiration to paint it came from an old picture belonging to his uncle. You know that of course?" and she laid a thin sandwich on Nathan's plate.
"You mean Tilghman's Lely—the one in his house in Kennedy Square? Oh," said Richard, lifting his fingers in appreciation, "I know every line of it. It is one of the best Lely's I ever saw, and to me the gem of Tilghman's collection."
"Yes; so Ollie tells me," continued Margaret. "Now this picture of the Countess is to me very much more in Velasquez's method than in Lely's. Broader and stronger and with a surer touch. I have always told Ollie he was right to give up landscapes. These two pictures show it. There is really, Mr. Horn, no one on this side of the water who is doing exactly what Oliver is." She spoke as if she was discussing Page, Huntington or Elliott or any other painter of the day, not as if it was her lover. "Did you notice how the lace was brushed in and all that work about the throat—especially the shadow tones?"