"Clifford not at home?" said Edgerton one evening as he entered,
addressing my wife, and looking indifferently around the room. "I
wished to tell him about some pictures which are to be seen at ----'s
room--really a lovely Guido--an infant Savior--and something, said
to be by Carlo Dolce, though I doubt. You must see them. Shall I
call for you tomorrow morning?"
"I thank you, but have an engagement for the morning."
"Well, the next day. They will remain but a few days longer in the
city."
"I am sorry, but I shall not be able to go even the next day, I am
so busy."
"Busy? ah! that reminds me to ask if you have given up the pencil
altogether? Have you wholly abandoned the studio? I never see you
now at work in the morning. I had no thought that you had so much
of the fashionable taste for morning calls, shopping, and the like."
"Nor have I," was the quiet answer. "I seldom leave home in the
morning."
"Indeed!" with some doubtfulness of countenance, almost amounting
to chagrin--"indeed! how is it that I so seldom see you, then?"
"The cares of a household, I suppose, might be my sufficient excuse.
While my liege lord works abroad, I find my duties sufficiently
urgent to task all my time at home."
"Really--but you do not propose to abandon the atelier entirely?
Clifford himself, with his great fondness for the art, will scarcely
be satisfied that you should, even on a pretence of work."
"I do not know. I do not think that MY HUSBAND"--the last two words
certainly emphasized--"cares much about it. I suspect that music
and painting, however much they delighted and employed our girlhood,
form but a very insignificant part of our duties and enjoyments
when we get married."
"But you do not mean to say that a fine landscape, or an exquisite
head, gives you less satisfaction than before your marriage?"
"I confess they do. Life is a very different thing before and after
marriage. It seems far more serious--it appears to me a possession
now, and time a sort of property which has to be economized and
doled out almost as cautiously as money. I have not touched a brush
this fortnight. I doubt if I have been in the painting-room more
than once in all this time."
This conversation, which evidently discomfited William Elgerton, was
productive to me of no small satisfaction. After a brief interval,
consumed in silence, he resumed it:-"But I must certainly get you to see these pictures. Nay, I must
also--since you keep at home--persuade you to look into the studio
tomorrow, if it be only to flatter my vanity by looking at a sketch
which I have amused myself upon the last three mornings. By-the-way,
why may we not look at it tonight?"