"And the stolen child, who is waiting?" she said, glancing at me.
"What, Daisy!" he exclaimed, seeing me for the first time.
Miriam attempted to rise; he eagerly turned back to her, and entreated her so ardently to remain thus, that she yielded. When he had prevailed, he turned to me.
"Daisy," he said gaily, "you are a good little girl, but you may take off your picturesque attire."
Alas! so I might: the sorceress had conquered me in my last stronghold!
At first Miss Russell would not hear of sitting for anything more finished and elaborate than a sketch in crayons, but from the sketch to a water-colour drawing, and from this again to an oil painting, the progression was rapid: at length the Stolen Child was wholly set aside and replaced on the easel by Medora. I had before lost Cornelius in the evening, in his moments of leisure and liberty, I now lost him at his labour; the intruder stepped in between him and me on the very spot where I thought myself most secure, and I had to look on and see it, for Miriam objected, it seems, to sitting to Cornelius alone; Kate had something else to do than to keep them company: the task was left to me.
That Miriam should sit to Cornelius instead of me, was the least part of my grief; I had never expected that he would always paint little girls: the sitting in itself was nothing, but it led to much that it was acute misery for a jealous child like me to witness.
I was not accustomed to be much noticed by Cornelius in the studio, but if he had a look to spare from his picture, a word to utter in a pause of his work, he gave both look and word to the child who sat to him, or silently watched him painting, and now this was taken from me! I was to my face robbed and impoverished, that another might be enriched with all I lost. For two years I had reigned in that studio, of which not even Kate shared the empire; for two years Cornelius had there spoken to me of his art, of his future, of everything that was linked with this proud aim and darling ambition of his life; and now another listened to his aspirations; another heard every passing thought and feeling which, though a child, it had once been mine to hear, and I had to look on and see it all.
But it was not all.
I did not merely see Miriam enjoying whatever I had once enjoyed; I saw her loved as I had never been loved, possessed of a thousand things which had never been mine to lose. Miriam was a woman, an intellectual, educated woman; she could do more than listen to Cornelius, she could converse with him; she did do so, and constantly she showed me the immense superiority which her knowledge and her years gave her over a mere child like me. She had also become converted to Art, and if not so fervent a disciple as I had been, she was certainly a far more discriminating critic. Her sense of the beautiful was keen and peculiar. She seldom admired it under its daily external aspects, but she could detect it where it seemed invisible to others, and was by them unsought for. She never agreed with Cornelius about what he considered the merits of his pictures; but then, by showing him other real merits of which he had remained unconscious, she charmed more than she ever provoked him. With his fair mistress to sit to him, to look at and talk to—what could Cornelius want with me? It was natural that involuntary and unconscious carelessness should creep into his kindest words and caresses; that, exclusively absorbed in Miriam, he should often forget my presence; that his look, perpetually fastened on her, should seldom fall on me; that every word he uttered should be directed to her: it was natural; but to see, feel, know this, not once in a time, but daily, not for an hour in the day, but all day long, was a torment that acted on me as a slow fever.