CHAPTER XIII.
“IT IS A GEM!” HE CRIED.
Mr. Legare sat in his magnificent library, talking with Frank and Lizzie, his only children. Where the large room was not lined with book-cases filled from ceiling to floor with choice works, paintings by the masters of art filled every space.
To a scholar and an artist that library would seem a fairy region where taste and fancy, roaming hand in hand, could live forever. And Mr. Legare had tastes which fed on the artistic beauty of his paintings, and enjoyed the worth of his valuable books. He had tried to rear his children to the same taste, to similar noble and improving studies. But he had also, with his almost unlimited wealth, given them access to all fashionable pleasures, and the consequence was that both son and daughter found more pleasure in the outside world than in the solid realities of their palace-like home. The opera and its circle of fashion, theatrical spectacles, not the grand old plays of Shakespeare, balls, routes, and club pastimes suited them far better than to gaze on those noble works of art, or pore over the grand array of books which filled the hundreds of shelves in the best private library in the great city.
Mr. Legare was looking over his last acquisition, the rare old reviews, beautifully bound, which had just been sent in from Mr. W——’s book-bindery. The work was, as usual with that establishment, elegantly done; but Mr. Legare was intently looking over the inside of the works, while Frank and Lizzie were looking over a new collection of fine English prints, which had just been received from London, and were now spread out on the mosaic table-center.
Suddenly an exclamation of surprise and pleasure broke from the old gentleman’s lips.
“Wonderful! It is a gem! and it illustrates the subject perfectly!” he cried.
“What is it that pleases you so, papa?” asked the daughter.
“A pencil sketch on the blank leaf of this old review. It is an illustrated idea of a dream of Martin Luther—angels poring over the revealed word of God. It is perfection, and entirely fresh. It must be the work of that wonderful girl down at W——’s bindery, for she alone has had the care of this work since it left my hands, and the drawing was not there when I took the pages to the bindery. It must be the work of that wonderfully gifted girl. I’ll find out, and if it is, she must and shall have a chance to study art. This sketch would do credit to a Dore, or any other artist. Come and look at it, Frank.”
“Excuse me, father, I am looking over your new portfolio, and, moreover, I am no believer in the wonderful talent of shop-girls. It is very easy, when so many works are coming and going, to make copies of sketches. That may be a copy from Dore, for all you know.”
“Even if copied, none but an artistic hand could do it so well,” said the old gentleman, his eyes still lingering over the sketch.