'And you too, Mr. Winthrop! Of course we should have expected you. I don't wonder you're always about so much with Mr. Audouin. I think him, you know, the most charming talker I've ever met with.'
Hiram could have sunk into the ground with mortification at having thus always to play second fiddle to Audouin, whose grizzling hair made him seem to Gwen so much a confirmed old bachelor that she didn't think there could be any danger at all in openly speaking out her admiration for his powers as a talker.
They went by train to the station at Albano, and then drove up to the shores of the lake in carriages which Audouin had ready in waiting. Recluse and hermit as he was, when he went in for giving an entertainment, he gave it regally; and the picnic was universally pronounced to be the most splendid success of the Roman season. After lunch they dispersed a little, as people always do at picnics (or else what would be the use of that form of reunion?) and Colin somehow found himself, he didn't quite know how, strolling with Gwen down the Galleria di Sopra, that beautiful avenue of shady evergreen oaks which leads, with innumerable lovely glimpses of the lake below, from Albano towards Castel Gandolfo. Gwen, however, knew well enough how it had all happened; for she had angled most cleverly so as to avoid the pressing attentions of Audouin, and to pair off in apparent unconsciousness with the more favoured Colin. Mrs. Wilmer, walking behind with another guest to do the proprieties, had acquiesced most heartily in this arrangement, and had even managed to promote it diligently: for did it not compel Mr. Audouin to link himself for the afternoon to dear Lilian, and was it not well known that Mr. Audouin, though an American, was otherwise a most unexceptionable and eligible person, with quite sufficient means of his own to marry most comfortably upon? Whereas this young Mr. Churchill, though no doubt wonderfully clever, and a most estimable young man in his own way, was a person of no family, and with all his fortune still to make by his own exertions. And Mr. Audouin had really hardly a trace, after all, of that horrid American singsong.
'Yes,' Gwen was saying, as they reached the point of view near the Emissario: 'Signor Maragliano told me that before many months were over, he should advise you to begin modelling a real life-size figure from the life of your own invention; for he thinks you would be only wasting your time in working much longer at mere copying or academy work. He wants to see you begin carrying out some of your own beautiful original conceptions. And so do I too, you know: for we feel in a way, papa and I, as if we had discovered you, Mr. Churchill.—Shall we sit down here awhile, under the oak trees? This broad shade is so very delicious.'
[Original]
She gave Colin her hand, to help her down the first bit of the side path to the old Roman conduit; and as she did so, she looked into his face with her lovely eyes, and smiled her thanks to him expressively. Cohn took her hand and helped her gently down. 'You're very good to interest yourself so much in my work,' he said, with no trace of shyness or awkwardness in his manner. 'I shall be glad indeed when I'm able to begin producing something worthy in real earnest.'
Gwen was really very beautiful and very kind and very cordial. He never for a moment remembered with her the original disparity of their stations, as he did with so many other grand ladies. She seemed to put him at his ease at once, and to be so frank and complimentary and even pressing. And then, her profile was magnificent, and her eyes were really splendid!
Ah, Minna, Minna, poor little Minna, in your big noisy schoolroom away over yonder in big noisy London, well may you tremble with a cold shiver running strangely through you, you know not why, and murmur to yourself, in your quaint old-world superstition, that somebody must be walking over your grave to-day somewhere or other!