Rosy crossed her own hands after another fashion, and was silent.
'How do you generally hold your hands when you are enduring anything?' Rollo asked the other speaker demurely.
'Ah, now you are laughing at me!' she said. 'But I don't think I quite understand passive, inactive fortitude. I like Niobe's arms, all wrapped about her child,—do you remember?'
'I remember. But you don't call that fortitude, do you?'
'Yes,' said Wych Hazel. 'She was dying by inches,—and yet her arms look, so strong! I am sure she didn't know whether they were crossed or uncrossed.'
'Do you think that lion there in the corner looks like Mr.
Falkirk?'
'No, indeed! Mr. Falkirk would take a good deal more notice of me, if I was balancing myself on one finger,' said Wych Hazel.
'What is that one finger for?' said Primrose.
'Do you ask that, Rosy? To show that she has nothing earthly to lean upon. She just touches the pillar, as much as to say it is broken and of no use to her. Perhaps her confidence is in that slumbering lion,—Is that another representation of fortitude?'
He had hid Sir Joshua's picture with an engraving of
Delaroche's Marie Antoinette leaving the Tribunal.