With a brief and gentle farewell to her, Bonnibel entered the carriage with her husband.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
"Hurrah, Leslie!"
"Well, Carl!"
"Our pictures are sold!"
"What pictures?"
"What pictures?" mimicking the indifferent tone. "Oh! how indifferent we are! yet a year ago how blessed were the feet of the messenger who brought such tidings! Success falls upon you, my boy. Now with me a ready sale is quite an event. Of course I meant the pictures we sent to Paris!"
The same old studio at Rome into which we looked three years ago, and the same two artists we saw then. Carl Muller had just entered, waving an open letter over his head.
The gay, mercurial German looked as boyishly handsome as ever, as though time had forgotten him. Not so with Leslie Dane, who stood beside a half-finished picture, critically regarding it. He was handsomer than ever, as though the subtle hand of a sculptor had been at work upon his features chiseling the fine Greek outlines into rarer perfection and delicacy. A few lines of thought and care added rather than detracted from the interest with which one turned a second time to look at his face. The full lips half shaded by the dark mustache had lost a little of the almost womanly sweetness of the past and acquired a sterner curve. Into the dark eyes there had crept a gleam of brooding sadness, and a few silver threads shone in the clustering locks about his white brow. His last three years had made their mark upon him in many subtle changes.