Page:Elizabeth's Pretenders.djvu/43

30 on horseback than anywhere, and so her companion thought. They galloped across the downs, and hardly spoke a word until they entered a wood of young larch and birch trees, through the burgeoned lilac tips and tender greens of which the pale blue sky of May looked bluer overhead. Her cheek was flushed with the exercise; her dark eyes gleamed. "She looks positively handsome," the soldier said to himself, and his lips were opened. What he uttered is of small account. Thinking over their ride afterwards, Elizabeth could recall no single thing that he had said; but the general effect of his conversation was as a soothing accompaniment played to an admirably devised tableau—the fair stalwart knight upon his white horse, lit by the flickering sunlight through the delicate tracery of boughs; the fleecy clouds, like flocks chasing each other across the blue sky, overhead; the mossy turf, starred with anemones, underfoot. Years afterwards that picture remained painted on her mind unfaded. Subsequent troubles could never efface or injure it. It was a picture—nothing more. It stood in its little frame apart, untouched by any deep feeling, and so unembittered by regret.

Three days passed, much upon this wise. He sat for his portrait each morning, and each afternoon they were together; not always alone, though occasions for their being left so, which could hardly be the result of pure accident, were not infrequent. Elizabeth's work did not progress as rapidly or as satisfactorily as she had hoped. She could not get the modelling of the head right, and the wonderful transparent shadows on the flesh were translated opaquely. She saw it. She had lost the