"Make your mind easy, Kate; Mary Stuart died in a velvet robe, which, poor thing, she kept for solemn occasions." Miss O'Reilly's face brightened. "Indeed I am glad to hear it; the imitation is perfect; real velvet could not have more depth and softness. How much pains you must have taken with it!" "Yes, it gave me some trouble." "But how sorry I am, the other pictures are sold!" "It could not be helped! I wanted the money." "Yes, but it has kept you in the shade all this time. What a pity Mary Stuart was not finished for this year's Academy!" She looked at him so earnestly that he reddened. "Cornelius," she continued rather seriously, "why was it not finished for this year's Academy?" Jane spared him the trouble of answering, by looking in, and conveying the intimation that more luggage had come, and that there was a bill of one pound ten and elevenpence halfpenny to pay. "I wish they may get it!" hotly said Miss O'Reilly; "it is perfectly shameful; let me manage them, Cornelius, only just come to see whether they have not changed your luggage for that of some one else. My opinion is," she added, raising her voice, "that people who charge one pound ten shillings and elevenpence halfpenny for carriage are capable of anything." He smiled; they went out together, closed the door, and left me alone with Mary Stuart and my bitter disappointment. I could not understand it; it was strange, incredible, and yet it was so, I looked and did not admire. I could have cried with vexation to feel that this stately Mary Stuart did not touch me; that her sorrowful beauty, the grief of her weeping women, the insolent scorn of the English nobles, the impassiveness of the headsman, the commonplace pity of the lookers-on, actually left me cold and unmoved. And yet thus it was, and the longer I looked, the worse it grew; so I gave it up in despair, and turned to the portfolio. Sketch after sketch I turned over with a pleasure that gradually grew into delight. All Italy, in her sunshine and beauty, seemed to pass before me. Here a dark-eyed girl danced the Tarantella; there swarthy boys with eager faces played at the morra; beggars held out their hand for alms with the look and mien of princes; and village women, of a beauty as calm and pure as that of the image above them, knelt and prayed before the shrine of some lowly Madonna. Nor was I less charmed by the glimpses of landscape and out-door life. I felt the warmth of that blue sky which looked as if the very heavens were opening; the sunshine on the steps of the white church dazzled me with its brightness; there were depths of coolness in the dark shade of those old trees beneath which the women sat reposing; there was life and dewy freshness in the waters of the stone fountain by which the children played. Charmed and absorbed, I never heard Cornelius enter, and knew not he was by me until he said in a careless tone behind me--