"I am only too proud to show it her," answered Will, and he removed a cloth from the painting that rested upon an easel.
"What a sweet, lovely face!" exclaimed Feodora. "I have never seen anything sweeter in my life."
Will hastened to assure her, though he flushed with pride, that it lacked very much of doing the fair Jennie justice.
"There is something so good and pure in that face, that it rests one to look at it," said the fair Russian.
"Would you accept it from me as a present?" asked Will.
"O Mr. Marsh! would you really part with it?"
"I shall feel greatly honored if you will accept it from me. I intend painting another immediately. Whether I shall ever reach my ideal, I do not know."
"I fear that you never will until you return to Constance House," said Mattie slyly.
"Now Mattie, that is very unkind of you," cried Will with a well-assumed severity.
Feodora thanked Will sincerely for his present, and declared that it should be hung in her room where she might see it the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. "Surely nothing could be sweeter and more interesting than the romance connected with this lovely painting," said she.