Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/122

112 year after year. It was like living two lives on two different planets; no one who knew her only in one would recognize her in the other,—would believe the other possible to her. How should John Bassett dream that this girl, who knew every tree, every wayside weed by name, who climbed rocks with exultant joy like a chamois, who came home from her drives, day after day, with her arms loaded with ground pine and clematis, with big boughs of bright leaves, with lichens and mosses, would be transformed one month later, in her city home, to a nonchalant, conventional woman of society, entirely absorbed in a routine of visits and balls?

Fanny Lane was also an artist by nature. No spot of color in the woods, no distant shading of tint in the horizons, no picturesque grouping of work-people in the fields, no smallest beauty of their rude homesteads, escaped her eye; she noted every one; and she spoke of each one with the overflowing tone of delight which belongs to the joy of the true artist nature. How should John Bassett dream that all these things which she seemed so to love and delight in, she loved and delighted in as a spectacle, as if they were painted on a canvas! and that she would use the same tones and show the same joy, a few weeks later, over rare jewels and beautiful raiment, over an exquisite equipage or a fine-flavored wine! How should John Bassett dream, when she jumped, lightly from the high wagon-seat to the ground, at one bound