CHAPTER XI.
THE TELEGRAM ARRIVES.
Mr. Longcluse placed the little oval enamel, set in gold, in Miss Arden's fingers, and held the lamp beside her while she looked.
“How beautiful!—how very interesting!” she exclaimed. “What suffering in those thin, handsome features! What a strange enthusiasm in those large hazel eyes! I could fancy that monk the maddest of lovers, the most chivalric of saints. And did he really suffer that incredible fate? Did he really die of love?”
“So they say. But why incredible? I can quite imagine that wild shipwreck, seeing what a raging sea love is, and how frail even the strongest life.”
“Well, I can't say, I am sure. But your own novelists laugh at the idea of any but women—whose business it is, of course, to pay that tribute to their superiors—dying of love. But if any man could die such a death, he must be such as this picture represents. What a wild, agonised picture of passion and asceticism! What suicidal devotion and melancholy rapture! I confess I could almost fall in love with that picture myself.”
“And I think, were I he, I could altogether die to earn one such sentence, so spoken,” said Mr. Longcluse.
“Could you lend it to me for a very few days?” asked the young lady.
“As many—as long as you please. I am only too happy.”