"So Miss Storey does not go down to the poor people's cottages as she used to do, my son told me, stealing out of sight of the guard?"
"Not she. She walks quite disconsolate along the beach to the east, instead of going in and out, above and below, among the downs, as she used to do when she had something to go out for."
"And the Lieutenant's lady too; does she go out as formerly?"
"As much as ever; but then she has something to do that makes it worth while. She gets one of the Preventive people to carry a little light table and her portfolio; and she paints,--never minding the wind or the sun, or anything. If it blows much, she pins her paper down at the corners, and puts her hair back, and paints away: and if the sun is hot, up goes her large umbrella, and still she paints away."
"Dear me! What does she paint? I wonder whether she ever painted my poor son."
"I think she hardly began after her marriage till the spring weather came on, and----"
"Ah! it was March when he came by his end. The 3d of March, at half-past one in the morning, they tell me, ma'am."
"The lady has painted a good many of the guard, though," continued Rebecca, wishing to change the subject. "She has a number of pictures of them, some drawing water at the wells on the downs, or sitting polishing their arms in the martello towers, or feeding their pigs at the station-house. We used to hear strangers call those towers very ugly things; but she has made a world of pretty pictures of them, looking as different as if they were not the same places."
"She must be a clever lady, then; for there is nothing to my mind so dull and uniform as those towers. They are worse than the houses I saw last year in the Regent's Park,--all alike, except such little differences as don't signify."
"Mrs. Storey would make even them look different, I fancy: for, as to these towers,--some are white, standing on a yellow sand, with a dark blue sky behind, and the sea a darker blue still,--which you know it is sometimes. And then she makes a shadow from a cloud come over the tower, and the sea all streaked with different colours; and then it is the turn of the sails at sea to be white,--and a bird, perhaps, hovering over the dark parts. Once she went out when the moon was near the full, the Lieutenant himself carrying her cloak and her sketch-book that time, and she wanting nothing besides but her case of pencils. From that sketch she made a beautiful picture of a grey sea, with the foam white in the moonlight; and in that case, the tower was quite black on the side of the shadow, and so was the guard on watch, as you saw him between you and the surf."