"I accept them. Finish one of me so good as that, and I will send it to my mother and ask her what she will give for it."
"But not tell her?"——
"Certainly not."
"I find," said Dolly slowly, "that it is a very great compliment for a lady to paint a gentleman's likeness."
"Why?"
"She has to give so much attention to the lines of his face. I shouldn't like to paint some people. But I'll do anybody, for a consideration."
"Your words are not flattering," said Lawrence, "even if your actions are."
"No," said Dolly. "Compliments are not in my way."
And though she made a beginning upon St. Leger's picture, and studied the lines of his face accordingly, he did not feel flattered. Dolly's clear, intelligent eyes looked at him as steadily and as unmovedly as if he had been a Titian.
The next day brought a change. If Dolly had watched from her balcony with interest the day before, now she was breathless with what she found. The sun was shining bright, a breeze was rippling the waters of the lagoon, and gently fluttering a sail and a streamer here and there; the beautiful water was enlivened with vessels of all kinds and of many lands, black gondolas darted about; and the buildings lining the shores of the lagoon stood to view in their beauty and magnificence and variety before Dolly's eye; the Doge's palace, here and there a clock tower, here and there the bridge over a side canal. "O mother!" she cried, "we have seen nothing like this! nothing like this!"