"Strange and beautiful!" said my father. "But," he added, after a pause, "you must have met with many strange and beautiful things in such a life as yours; for it seems to me that such a life is open to the entrance of all simple wonders. Conventionality and routine and arbitrary law banish their very approach."
"I believe," said Miss Clare, "that every life has its own private experience of the strange and beautiful. But I have sometimes thought that perhaps God took pains to bar out such things of the sort as we should be no better for. The reason why Lazarus was not allowed to visit the brothers of Dives was, that the repentance he would have urged would not have followed, and they would have been only the worse in consequence."
"Admirably said," remarked my father.
Before we took our leave, I had engaged Miss Clare to dine with us while my father was in town.
CHAPTER XXI.
LADY BERNARD.
When she came we had no other guest, and so had plenty of talk with her. Before dinner I showed her my husband's pictures; and she was especially pleased with that which hung in the little room off the study, which I called my boudoir,—a very ugly word, by the way, which I am trying to give up,—with a curtain before it. My father has described it in "The Seaboard Parish:" a pauper lies dead, and they are bringing in his coffin. She said it was no wonder it had not been sold, notwithstanding its excellence and force; and asked if I would allow her to bring Lady Bernard to see it. After dinner Percivale had a long talk with her, and succeeded in persuading her to sit to him; not, however, before I had joined my entreaties with his, and my father had insisted that her face was not her own, but belonged to all her kind.
The very next morning she came with Lady Bernard. The latter said she knew my husband well by reputation, and had, before our marriage, asked him to her house, but had not been fortunate enough to possess sufficient attraction. Percivale was much taken with her, notwithstanding a certain coldness, almost sternness of manner, which was considerably repellent,—but only for the first few moments, for, when her eyes lighted up, the whole thing vanished. She was much pleased with some of his pictures, criticising freely, and with evident understanding. The immediate result was, that she bought both the pauper picture and that of the dying knight.
"But I am sorry to deprive your lovely room of such treasures, Mrs.
Percivale," she said, with a kind smile.
"Of course I shall miss them," I returned; "but the thought that you have them will console me. Besides, it is good to have a change; and there are only too many lying in the study, from which he will let me choose to supply their place."