"I should like to have that in my gloomy London rooms."
"Would you really?" she answered, all her face glowing. "Do then accept it. I am so proud and honoured and delighted. Do, please, choose any one you like, or more than one. They would all be yours if you wished it."
"This one appeals to me specially, and I shall never part with it, because it is the scene of our first kiss," Everest said, in a low tone, and rose with the picture in his hand to make space for it on the mantelpiece. As he did so he took a velvet case from before the glass and laid it on the table. It was just by Regina, and she glanced at it.
"What a beautiful face," she said, as the miniature of a girl's head with a delicate, cameo-like profile met her eyes.
"That? Yes; it's my cousin. She is considered very pretty," answered Everest from the mantelpiece; where he was installing her painting.
A little chill came over Regina as she looked; the cold, perfect face seemed to hold her gaze. His cousin's! Her portrait here! Suddenly his life, his far-off existence that was all so vague to her, had put out a hand and claimed him.
She sat silent, and Everest turned from the hearth, closed the frame and laid it on a side-table. Regina's painting now sat enthroned before the glass. The whole room was bright with pictures. Windows seemed open everywhere in the walls through which one saw vivid skies and seas and waving trees. They spoke about them all in turn; two artists together with fresh work to view will sit and talk all night over it if left undisturbed.
It struck twelve by her sister's silver clock on his table, before either of them noticed how the time had gone.
She sprang up from her chair and gathered the paintings together.
"How wrong of me to stay so late! And you came here to get well and keep early hours; I am so sorry."