CHAPTER XIX
THE INTERFERENCE OF A FAIRY GODMOTHER
PIPPA had been wont to haunt Jasper’s studio a good deal. His pictured saints appealed to her imagination. She loved the brilliance of their robes and the gold of their backgrounds.
Colour appealed to her, as already seen, enormously, though she had no power with brush or pencil herself. If she was ever to find expression for the thoughts and fancies which filled her brain she would possibly one day find it in writing. Beauty of language already moved her profoundly, and she would listen by the hour to anyone reading poetry aloud.
Jasper missed the child almost more than Miss Mason did. He seemed to have nothing to fill up the gap she left in his life, and his old restlessness in a measure returned. He took to dropping in at Miss Mason’s studio at odd hours, in order, so it seemed, to talk about Pippa, though he would often sit moody and silent. He would stare at the picture of Pippa wrapped in scarlet silk, her arms round the faun’s neck, which picture Barnabas had painted about a month previously, and which now hung in Miss Mason’s studio.
And one evening after looking at it for a long time he made a sudden remark—a remark that seemed forced from him.
“If Stella had lived she would have been nearly the same age as Pippa.”
Miss Mason looked up quickly.
“Who,” she asked, “was Stella?”
“My little girl,” said Jasper shortly.