‘I see,’ said Rosalie. ‘Yes, it must be a nice picture; and you say it is beautifully done?’
‘It is beautifully done. It is so real, so vivid, that I felt as if I could walk into the picture. These sheaves stand out so that one might think it easy to pass behind them.’
He glanced up as he said these words, and was surprised to see Rosalie colour almost to the temples. His own heart gave a sudden throb. Was it possible that she had divined the audacious thought which had so often come to him as he recalled that picture, and which, since his uncle’s revelations, he had resolutely striven to banish?
As a matter of fact there did happen to be a certain similarity between this thought of his and that which had caused Rosalie to change colour. For there had flashed across her mind the remembrance of the unknown artist’s words: ‘Perhaps if I come across a very attractive specimen of a rustic I may place him just behind the stook.’
‘This is the name underneath, I suppose?’ she said hastily. ‘What is the picture called? I cannot see from here.’
‘It is called “A Sleeping Beauty,”’ returned Richard.
She was dumb for a moment, hot waves of colour rushing over brow and neck. What was it the man had said last year? ‘You will wake up some day, my beauty.’ Words of ill omen! They had often tantalised and tormented her, but now, as they recurred to her, her heart seemed to stand still. Ashamed of her burning face, on which the young man’s eyes were now fixed, and of the agitation which she could not master, she suddenly bent forward confusedly.
‘What is the name of the painter? Let me look.’
Before Richard could divine her intention she had snatched the print from his hand, its black and jagged edges immediately catching her eye.
‘Why,’ she said in an altered tone—‘why, it is burnt.’