From that day Georgia rapidly recovered, and in less than a fortnight was able to get up and sit for a few hours each day in an easy chair by the window, inhaling the fragrant summer air. Her first request was to call for the latest papers; but for some time the doctor said she was not equal to the exertion of reading them, and, in spite of her passionate eagerness, she had to wait.
To ask about Richmond she did not dare; but how eagerly she scanned the first paper she got, in search of his name! And there she learned that he had gone South on a summer ramble, wandering about from place to place with the strange restlessness that characterized him.
It was a blow to her at first, but when she came to think it over, she was almost glad of it. Somehow, she scarcely could tell why she did not wish to meet him yet; if ever she returned to him, it must be in a way different from what she had left. She wanted to find her brother first; she had a vehement desire to win wealth and fame, and return to Richmond Wildair as his equal in every way. During the long weary hours of her convalescence she had made up her mind to go to the city.
The monotonous life of the last six months here grew unendurable to her now; she would not have taken uncounted wealth and consented to spend six more like them. Life at least was not stagnant in the uproar and turmoil of the city, and solitude is not always a panacea for all sorts of people in trouble.
She had money—her half-year's salary had been untouched, and it was no inconsiderable sum, for Mr. Leonard had been as generous as he was rich. She had a vague idea of winning fame as an artist. She felt an inward conviction that her "Hagar in the Wilderness" would create a sensation if seen. She took it out from its canvas screen, and gazed long and earnestly upon it.
It was a wild, weird, unearthly thing, but strangely beautiful withal, and possessing a sort of fascination that would have chained you before it for hours. Never did eye look on a more gloriously beautiful face than that of the pictured Egyptian in its dark splendor and unutterable anguish. The posture, as she half-lay, half-writhed in her inward torture, spoke of the darkest depth of anguish and despair; the long, wild, purplish black tresses streamed unbound in the breeze, and the face that startled you from the canvas was white with woman's utmost woe. And the eyes that caught and transfixed yours, sending a thrill of awe and terror to most stoical heart—those unfathomable eyes of midnight blackness, where despairing love, fiercest anguish, and maddest desperation seem struggling for mastery. Oh! never could any, but one in the utmost depths of despair herself, have painted eyes like these. Lucifer hurled from heaven might have cast back one last look like that, so full of conflicting passion, but the superhuman agony shining and surmounting them all—eyes that would have haunted you like a frightful nightmare, long after you had first beheld them, eyes that would have made you shudder, and yet held you spell-bound, breathless, riveted to the spot.
All unknown to herself she had painted her own portrait; those flowing, lustrous tresses, that dark, oriental face, those appalling eyes, that posture of utter woe and unspeakable desolation, all were hers. The face was almost the fac-simile of the one that had once so startled Richmond Wildair that morning on the sea-shore, only the passionate, tortured form was wanting.
At a little distance lay the boy Ishmael, with all his mother's dark beauty in his face, but so serenely calm and childishly peaceful that the contrast was all the more startling.
It was a wonderful picture, and no wonder that Georgia's eyes fired up, and her color came and went and her countenance glowed with power, and triumph and inspiration as she gazed.
"It must succeed—it will succeed—it shall succeed," she vehemently exclaimed. "There has been a prize offered by the Academy of Art for the best painting from a native artist, and mine shall go with the rest. And if it succeeds—"