I found myself agreeing to this proposition with an almost boyish enthusiasm. Lucio glanced at me with a slight half-cynical smile.
“Miss Clare, are you going to name a pigeon after Mr Tempest?” he inquired—“He played the part of an adverse critic, you know—but I doubt whether he will ever do so again!”
She looked round at me and smiled.
“Oh, I have been merciful to Mr Tempest,”—she replied; “He is among the anonymous birds whom I do not specially recognise!”
She stepped into the arched embrasure of an open window which fronted the view of the grass and flowers, and entering with her we found ourselves in a large room, octagonal in shape, where the first object that attracted and riveted the [p 236] attention was a marble bust of the Pallas Athene whose grave impassive countenance and tranquil brows directly faced the sun. A desk strewn with papers occupied the left-hand side of the window-nook,—in a corner draped with olive-green velvet, the white presence of the Apollo Belvedere taught in his inscrutable yet radiant smile, the lesson of love and the triumphs of fame,—and numbers of books were about, not ranged in formal rows on shelves as if they were never read, but placed on low tables and wheeled stands, that they might be easily taken up and glanced at. The arrangement of the walls chiefly excited my interest and admiration, for these were divided into panels, and every panel had, inscribed upon it in letters of gold, some phrase from the philosophers, or some verse from the poets. The passage from Shelley which Mavis had recently quoted to us, occupied, as she had said, one panel, and above it hung a beautiful bas-relief of the drowned poet copied from the monument at Via Reggio. Another and broader panel held a fine engraving of Shakespeare, and under the picture appeared the lines—
“To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Byron was represented,—also Keats; but it would have taken more than a day to examine the various suggestive quaintnesses and individual charms of this ‘workshop’ as its owner called it, though the hour was to come when I should know every corner of it by heart, and look upon it as a haunted outlaw of bygone ages looked upon ‘sanctuary.’ But now time gave us little pause,—and when we had sufficiently expressed our pleasure and gratitude for the kindness with which we had been received, Lucio, glancing at his watch, suggested departure.
“We could stay on here for an indefinite period Miss Clare,”—he said with an unwonted softness in his dark eyes; “It is a place for peace and happy meditation,—a restful corner for a tired soul.” He checked a slight sigh,—then [p 237] went on—“But trains wait for no man, and we are returning to town to-night.”