Miss O'Reilly was certainly surprised when she came up—much more surprised than pleased—to see the historic style put aside; but when her brother gently informed her that Mary Stuart was not quite a masterpiece, she waxed wroth, indignantly said he would never do better, and only hoped he would do as well. Cornelius heard her quietly, and smiled at me with the security of conscious power.
As he went on with his "Young Girl Reading," I was struck with the wonderful progress he had made—it more than fulfilled the promise of the Italian sketches. I expressed my admiration without reserve, and I could not but see in his face, how much it gratified him. The time that followed was, indeed, a happy time, as happy as the past, with much that the past had never known. Cornelius looked engrossed and delighted. He worked either with the impassioned ardour of a lover, or with a lingering tenderness as significant. He dwelt con amore, over certain bits, or stood back and looked at the whole fondly, through half-shut eyes, drinking in, with evident delight, that sweet intoxication which lies in the contemplation of our own work, when we can behold in it the fulfilment of some cherished idea. But, at the end of a fortnight, there came a change. He looked gloomy, misanthropic, and painted with the air of an angry lover, who has fallen out with his mistress. Ardour had become scorn—tenderness was changed into sullen languor. I guessed that one of his old desponding fits was on him, and, at length, I spoke. It was on a day when, spite of all his efforts, I could see that he scarcely worked. I left my place, and went up to him. For a while, I looked at the picture; then said:
"How it progresses."
"Wonderfully."
"I wish you would not be ironical, Cornelius."
"I wish you would not, Daisy."
"I only say what I think: that it progresses."
Cornelius laughed, but by no means cheerfully.
"I know you long for me to praise it," I observed, quietly.
"Indeed, I do not," he interrupted.