Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/154

Rh water, without any healthy reaction. For the opinion of so able a painter could not be disregarded. She recognized that his painting was good—very good—though it belonged to a school which was new to her, and with which she could not honestly feel much sympathy. She told Hatty so frankly—Hatty, whose own painting was the worst possible example of the same methods. Elizabeth felt that it would be impossible to sit in the same atelier, drawing from the same model, day after day, and leave her new friend's work unnoticed. It was better to take the bull by the horns, as she did before a week was over, and say—

"People see nature differently. I was never so convinced of this before. You see what I do not in those flesh-tints, and I as evidently see what you do not. Mr. Baring says I use too much bistre, that my tones are too brown. I dare say he is right—I am sure he is right; but Nature looks to me like that. I can't see it as you and he do."

"Don't you admire his painting?"

"Oh yes. It seems to me exceedingly clever—a little audacious, I suppose?—but awfully clever. Only I am sure, if I saw the lady and child he is painting, they would not appear to me quite like that. I see too much, perhaps."

"So I suppose," said Hatty, dryly.

It was useless to discuss the subject further. Miss Baring looked to the time when her new friend's eyes should be opened; for that she was unusually gifted, the attention which Alaric paid to her studies clearly indicated. He never said so—he only said it was a pity she had been badly taught; but Hatty knew her brother.