"What are they all looking at?" he said, drawing near to where a crowd had gathered around one of the lower paintings. "At some stupid picture or other," I replied, impatiently. "It is always the stupid pictures that the people look at." He smiled at the petulant speech, and, spite of my evident indifference made way for me through the crowd of gazers; but I turned away, I would not look. With an ill-repressed smile of contempt, I listened to the "exquisite," "beautiful," "a wonderful thing," which I heard around me. "Yes," I thought, scornfully, "much you know about it, I dare say." "I really think we must mark this one," whispered my cousin. "What do you say?" I looked up ungraciously, but the book and pencil-case nearly dropped from my hands as I recognized "The Young Girl Reading." "Don't you like it?" asked Mr. Thornton, smiling. Oh! yes, I liked it! and him whose genius had created it, and whose master-hand had fashioned it; ay! and for his sake I liked even those who gazed on it, in a fast increasing crowd; and as if I had never seen it before, I looked with delighted eyes at the work of Cornelius. There was something in the admiration it excited I could not mistake. It was genuine and true. He was at length, after seven years of toil, known and famous. Sudden repute must have something of a breathless joy, but it cannot possess the sweetness of a slow-earned and long-coming fame. I felt as if I could have looked for ever; but the crowd was pressing eagerly behind us: my cousin led me away. "I see you will not mark it," he gaily said, taking the catalogue from me. "Do you really like it?" I asked, stammering. "Do I like it? Why it is a wonderful picture! the most perfect union I have ever seen of the real and ideal. It is not sold, is it?" I replied I thought not. He said he hoped not; that he should be quite concerned to miss it; and he proceeded to pay the genius of Cornelius very high and handsome compliments. I heard him with beating heart and swimming eyes; I felt too happy; it was not more than I had expected ever since the return of Cornelius from Italy; but for being anticipated, his triumph was not to me less glorious and delightful. I could think of nothing else; my eyes saw, but my mind could receive no impressions. Whatever picture I looked at became "The Young Girl Reading" with the crowd around her. Mr. Thornton thought the heat affected me, and proposed joining his sister. We soon found her with Mrs. Langton. They looked dull and tired. As we entered the carriage, Mrs. Brand asked, with her air of _ennui_, how I liked the pictures, and if I had been amused. "More than amused," I replied, warmly. Mr. Thornton half smiled, and looked into the street; Mrs. Brand shut her eyes, and reclined back with an air of satisfaction, and Mrs. Langton flushed up like a rose. I looked at the three, and thought them odd people.