The woman looked at her with her wild, black eyes for a moment, and then went on with her occupation of cleaning off the table, as if she had not heard her.
“Because,” persisted Pet, “I’m of no use to any one here, and they’ll be anxious about me up home. They don’t know I’m out, you know.”
The woman went calmly on with her work without replying, and Pet, seeing it was all a waste of breath, pleading, got up and went over to the shelf where the books were, in search of something to read. A number of pencil-drawings lay scattered about. Pet took them, and little as she knew of art, she saw they had been sketched by a master-hand.
“Oh, how pretty!” she exclaimed; “was it you drew these?”
“No; my husband,” answered the woman. “They are all fancy sketches, he says.”
There was a sort of bitterness in the last words, unnoticed by Pet, who was eagerly and admiringly examining the drawings. One, in particular, struck her; it represented a large, shadowy church, buried in mingled lights and shades, that gave a gloomy, spectral, weird appearance to the scene. At the upper end, near the grand altar, stood a youth and a maiden, while near a white-robed clergyman, book in hand. A dying bird seemed fluttering over their heads, and ready to drop at their feet. The face of the youth could not be seen, but the lovely, childlike face of the girl was the chief attraction of the drawing. Its look of unutterable love, mingled with a strange, nameless terror; its rare loveliness, and the passionate worship in the eyes upturned to him who stood beside her, sent a strange thrill to the very heart of Pet. A vague idea that she had seen a face bearing a shadowy resemblance to the beautiful one in the picture somewhere before, struck her. The face was familiar, just as those we see in dreams are; but whether she had dreamed of one like this, or had really seen it, she could not tell. She gazed and gazed; and the longer she gazed, the surer she was that she had really and certainly seen, if not that face, some one very like it, before.
“Can you tell me if this is a fancy sketch?” said Pet, holding it up.
“My husband says so. Why?” asked the woman, fixing her eyes, with a keen, suspicious glance, on Pet.
“Oh, nothing; only it seems to me as if I had seen that face before. It is very strange; I cannot recollect when or where; but I know I have seen it.”
“You only imagine so.”