“And was there never a portrait of your gifted, beautiful child?” interrupted Emily, in a quivering tone.
The question seemed to stir a deep fount of feeling—the stranger’s face flushed, and passionate tears gushed from her eyes.
“Ah, yes! but I may not have it—I may not see it long,” she cried. “Oh, my child, I must leave you forever!”
Emily was startled by this emotion, but in a few moments the mother became calm and continued:
“Not many weeks before Elise’s illness, as we were walking in the city, an artist observed my child, and followed her to our humble home. He praised her loveliness to me, in words which I cannot now remember, though I well recollect their import. He said her beauty was remarkable—was rare. In all his life he had never seen a face to compare with it, never an eye so glorious, so full of soul; he said such beauty should not be lost to the world, and he begged that I would let her sit to him, offering at the same time a liberal compensation.
“My heart was filled with a proud joy, but I let Elise decide for herself, and alter many urgent entreaties, she at length consented. Ah, I was very, very happy! I felt that her beauty was not to wither in unappreciation—the world would know of her loveliness—through the artist they might hear of her, and who could tell the happy days in store for my child. And I joyed also to know that now in the bright mornings she would be walking through the gay streets of the city, in the glad, fresh air, instead of bending wearily over her needle-work in our small dark room.
“For several mornings I accompanied Elise to the studio of the artist, though I could ill afford the time, but at length I found it utterly impossible, for our daily bread was to be earned, and Elise went alone. I sometimes fancied that when she returned at noon, she looked weary from her long walk, but she never complained, and I only thought her more beautiful than ever. One day she returned, and flinging into my lap her little green purse, heavy with silver, she said languidly —
“ ‘The picture does not need me any more, and I am very glad, for my head aches sadly—they say the portrait is very like me, mother.’
“I resolved to go with her to see it on the following day, but—oh, Father in Heaven! when the time came that I looked upon it first, my child lay here. I cannot tell you how she faded in my arms day by day—but, when I had seen her own rose-tree planted over the place of her rest, and had wept upon the green sod till the fountain of tears seemed dry, slowly and wearily I sought the studio of the painter, longing, yet almost fearing, to look upon her image there. Oh, what a vision met my gaze! I had thought to see her semblance—to trace a likeness to my loved Elise in the artist’s work; but there, full of life and beauty as though she had never left me, she stood before me. I wept over that picture tears more passionate than I had shed beside her grave, and I begged and received permission to visit it every day.
“A few nights after, on returning to my home, I found that my aged father, who had long been yearning to return to the land of his youth, had been making some arrangements with friends who were in a few months to sail for Italy, feeling that I would not refuse to go with him, now that my only tie to America, to life, save him, was severed. A week before I would have said yes—would have left the dear grave of my buried Elise, and gone with my father to die in the land of our birth; but now I seemed held by a living tie—I felt as if my child were with me here, and I must take her, or my heart would break. I told my father and his friends this; we were all poor, but they loved me, and by the sale of many little articles—some how dear, God only knows, we raised money enough to buy the picture, at the price which I had often heard from Elise the artist demanded for a portrait.