Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/72

62 ministered to his convenience. He painted while he talked, and he talked while he painted; and if the painting was as miscellaneous as the talk, the talk would equally have graced an album. We waited while the exhibition went on, and it seemed indeed as if the conscious profiles of the peaks were interested in his success. They grew as black as silhouettes in paper, sharp against a livid sky, from which, however, there would be nothing to fear till Lord Mellifont's sketch should be finished. Blanche Adney communed with me dumbly, and I could read the language of her eyes: "Oh, if we could only do it as well as that! He fills the stage in a way that beats us." We could no more have left him than we could have quitted the theatre till the play was over; but in due time we turned round with him and strolled back to the inn, before the door of which his lordship, glancing again at his picture, tore the fresh leaf from the block and presented it, with a few happy words, to Mrs. Adney. Then he went into the house; and a moment later, looking up from where we stood, we saw him, above, at the window