The letter of the kind physician had not reached its destination, and Mervin was still pursuing his brilliant career with the fond hope of soon being in a situation to claim his betrothed.
A solemn procession passed a group of artists collected together at a corner of one of the principal streets. The corpse of a young female was borne past them on a flower-strewn bier, to one of the principal hotels. A close carriage followed, containing a single mourner. An inquiry was made as to who the deceased was.
“A young American lady.”
An undefinable feeling of sympathy with his bereaved countryman, induced Mervin to separate from the group, and join the procession. As it entered the hotel, he was about to follow and offer his services, when he met a servant belonging to the establishment to whom he was well known. The man stopped and addressed him.
“The American signor who has just arrived wishes an artist to take the likeness of his wife, before she is buried. As you are a fellow-countryman, I was about to seek you, signor—for your pictures are justly renowned, and this lady is even now very beautiful. The gentleman is too deeply afflicted to see you himself.”
“What is his name, Guiseppe?”
“Signor Hibut, or Hobut—I cannot tell which.”
The sound of the name, in the Italian’s pronunciation, appeared so little like the real one, that his old rival never once occurred to Mervin—and without further hesitation he dispatched a servant to his studio to bring the requisite materials for his task.
He was ushered into the chamber of death; and a cold thrill of emotion almost unnerved him as he looked on the bier, with the sharp outline of a human form clearly defined beneath the white coverlet that lay above it. The withered flowers which were strewn over it, seemed but to mock the stern conqueror who had laid his strong grasp on the marble form of the dead, and he removed them, though he withheld his hand from raising the veil which shrouded her features, until the servant who had been sent to his studio had fulfilled his commission and departed.