Thus apostrophised, Frere turned his eyes in the unwonted direction of the chimney-glass, and there descrying the butter-knife behind his ear, was somewhat disconcerted; and muttering that it must have got there by accident, of its own accord, instead of a pen, he felt that his position was quite untenable, and so, retreating ignominiously to the stronghold of his own bedroom, he busied himself in preparation for his departure, actually going the length of shaving himself and putting on a decent suit of clothes. Another half-hour saw him on the road to——.
It was on the afternoon of the same day that Rose Arundel sat at the window of their little drawing-room sketching the tower of an old church, which peeped prettily from amid a luxuriant group of giant elms. Mrs. Arundel had gone in a friend’s carriage to execute a host of minor commissions at a neighbouring town, and Rose, having written part of her quota for the next month’s magazine, was rewarding her industry by endeavouring to catch a peculiar effect of sunlight on the tower aforesaid. Having worked with brush and pencil for some minutes, she paused to criticise her drawing. It was a faithful copy of the landscape before her nicely executed, but she shook her head in dissatisfaction.
“It is laboured and tame,” she said; “half-a-dozen touches from Lewis’s pencil would have given the effect twice as well. What a strange thing is the power of genius, the hand creating at a stroke the brilliant conceptions of the mind!” and then she drew out some of her brother’s sketches in Germany: bold, free, spirited, and marked by refined, severe taste, skilled alike to select the telling points and reject the commonplace details, save where such details were required to assist in carrying out the leading idea, they all bore indisputable evidence of a true artist-mind.
From the sketches Rose grew to think of him who had traced them. She had not heard from Lewis for quite three weeks; his last letter had indicated a mind ill at ease, and Rose had written to him to entreat him to confide in her, if, as she feared, he was unhappy. Why did he not reply to her letter? Answering her question with a sigh, she turned again, pencil in hand, to the window, and perceived a gentleman advancing rapidly along the road leading to their cottage. For a moment her pulse beat quickly: could it be her brother? but Lewis’s was a figure not easily to be mistaken, and a second glance convinced her she was wrong; and then she gave a little start, and a bright blush made her look so pretty that it was quite a shame nobody was there to see her; had there been, perhaps she would not have turned to the glass, and still blushing and smiling, smoothed the glossy bands of her rich brown hair. Why she performed this ceremony at this particular moment we leave our female readers to discover, and having done so, of their courtesy to enlighten us. Then, like a puritanical little hypocrite as she was, she reseated herself at her drawing-table, sketching away as zealously as if the results of fixature and bandcline had been as little known to the philosophy of the nineteenth century as is the secret of alchemy.
In another minute the full, rich tones of a man’s voice were heard, bearing down the shrill expostulations of Rachel—
“Never mind about your mistress, young woman; where’s Miss Rose?”
“Upstairs, sir; but——”
“There, that’ll do, ‘but me no buts;’ let me get by; which is the door?—here we are.”
And as he uttered the last words, Frere, tired and dusty, with a carpet bag and a parcel of books in one hand, and his hat and the umbrella in the other, entered the little drawing-room. Rose advanced to receive him with a bright smile.
“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Frere,” she said, extending her hand. Frere shook it heartily, squeezing it in the process much harder than was agreeable.