“What nice rooms to dance in—are they all kept up for nothing but pictures?” she said, in deference to his apparent interest. Nancy did not say stupid pictures, as she had intended; and it is impossible to describe the disappointed feeling, the eager instructiveness of poor Arthur, who felt his own hitherto superficial conviction that every ordinarily well-endowed mind must care for pictures, at once confounded and intensified by the absolute blankness of his bride.
“My dear Nancy, France is more proud of these than of anything she possesses. It is one of the finest collections in the world.”
“I suppose they are worth a great deal of money,” she said, looking at them calmly, yet with a certain respect founded on this consideration. She was looking up at that divine wall upon which hangs the great Murillo, the Virgin of the Garden, and Her of the Veil, the sidelong penetrating fascination of the Gioconda, and many a wonder more; and her calm of incomprehension was almost sublime. Some were “pretty” she thought; but she pulled Arthur’s arm a little to go on, not knowing why he should wish to stay so long, and keep looking when she had seen everything. To be sure it was natural enough to respect things which were worth a great deal of money—the big vases, for instance, in the vestibules, of which she had felt that they must be worth a great deal, though they were not pretty. It was difficult to associate the same idea of value with the pictures, yet Nancy supposed nobody would make so much fuss about them but for this.
“Money!” Arthur said, with a little groan, then making the best of it as he was learning to do: “Yes, dear, a great deal of money—and more than money. Any one of them, almost, is worth more, even in money, than all you and I have in the world.”
“What a shame!” cried Nancy, “nasty old things,” and she pulled him on a little. Then she stopped for a second before the Leonardo in the corner, and laughed out. “What funny women! what are they sitting in each other’s laps for? That is the funniest I have seen yet,” she said.
“Hush, Nancy! this is by a very famous painter; but I cannot say I am fond of it,” said Arthur, in his didactic vein. “That on the other side is his, too—the Gioconda it is called—I like it better.”
“Not I,” said Nancy; “isn’t she deep! I can’t bear people with that look in their eyes. She is exactly like Lizzie Brown at home in Underhayes—you remember Lizzie Brown, Arthur? Come on, I am sure we have stayed long enough here.”
“As you like,” he said, with a sigh; “but there are some more I should have liked to point out to you—”
“That is pretty,” said Nancy, pointing to a bright-coloured copy which one of the many workers in the Salon Carré was making. “Mayn’t one look what they are doing? they would paint at home if they didn’t want to be seen. Oh, they are copying, are they? I am sure that is a great deal prettier than the old thing on the wall. What do they copy for?”
“To sell chiefly,” said Arthur, with a certain sullenness in his despair.