“Beautiful! Don’t you think it is something like Lady Anne Cope?” said Miss Falconer.
“Oh! dear, no!” cried Miss Georgiana Falconer: “it is a great deal handsomer than any of the Copes ever were, or ever will be!”
“It has a look of Lady Mary Nesbitt,” said one of the Lady Arlingtons.
“The eyes are so like Lady Coningsby, who is my delight,” said Georgiana.
“And it has quite the Arlington nose,” said Mrs. Falconer, glancing her eye upon the Lady Arlingtons. Count Altenberg, without moving his eye, repeated, “It is the most beautiful face I ever beheld.”
“Not nearly so beautiful as the original, sir,” said the painter.
“The original?—Is it a copy?”
“A portrait, sir.”
“Oh! a family portrait of one of our great, great grandmother Percys, I suppose,” said Miss Georgiana, “done in her youth—in a fancy piece, you know, according to the taste of those times—she must have been superlatively lovely.”
“Ma’am,” said the painter, “the young lady, of whom this is a portrait, is, I hope and believe, now living.”