A week later, Audouin went away to sail for America. But he carried
back with him a little memento which strangely surprised the servants at
Lakeside, when he set it up in a velvet-covered frame, among the Greek
vases and tiny Egyptian sardonyx mummies, on his study mantelpiece.
It was the photograph of a young lady in an English riding costume, by
Montabone of the Piazza di Spagna; and when the housemaid slipped it
out, 'jest to see who on airth could hev give it to him,' she found
on the back the little inscription, 'For Mr. Audouin, with Gwen
Howard-Russells best remembrances.'
Gwen herself, too, went before long; but before she went, she mentioned
casually to Colin Churchill that she expected to be back at Rome in
about four winters.
'We shall all be delighted to see you in Italy again, Miss
Howard-Russell,' Colin answered, with hardly more than mere formal
politeness. 'Won't we, Winthrop? Miss Russell is such a sincere admirer
of painting and sculpture.'
Was that man's heart as cold and hard as the marble from which he cut
his weeping nymphs and Calabrian peasants? Did he want a woman to go
down upon her knees before him, or didn't he see when she was making as
easy running for him as any man can expect from civilised society? He
was really too provoking.
The night before Gwen left Rome, however, a little oblong parcel arrived
at the hotel for her, containing a picture or something of the sort,
left at the door by an English signor, the porter said. Was it one of
Colin Churchill's designs for his unexecuted statues, Gwen wondered? She
cut the string hastily, and opened the packet with a little internal
flutter. No--wrong--evidently not from Mr. Churchill. It was a
watercolour sketch of the Emissario at the Lago d'Albano, carefully
finished in the minutest detail; and at the back was written in pencil,
somewhat shakily, 'With Hiram Winthrop's compliments.'
'How very polite of Mr. Winthrop,' Gwen said in a careless voice that
hardly hid her disappointment. 'He saw I was taken with the picture,
and he's finished it off beautifully, and sent it to me for a parting
present. It's a beautiful sketch, papa, isn't it? Come and see what Mr.
Winthrop has sent me, Mrs. Wilmer.'
'A very well-behaved young man indeed,' the colonel put in, looking
at the sketch casually, as if it were an object unworthy of a British
field-officer's serious attention. 'A very well-behaved young man,
although an American, and much less forward than that sculptor fellow,
who's always thrusting himself upon us on every conceivable occasion.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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