The mobile countenance of the child actress reflected as a mirror the sad memory evoked by the artist; a tear glistened upon the lashes of her beautiful eyes. "He was your friend?" she inquired. "Oh, yes; one of whom I was very proud." "Did you paint his portrait?" "Many times. He posed marvellously, and never tormented me as he did one of my fellow-artists to whom quite unwillingly he had accorded some sittings." "What did he do?" "Changed his mask every five minutes, until the poor artist, believing that he as often had a new model before him, or the devil, perhaps, flung away his brushes in despair." "Garrick once told me," said Esther Woodville, "that the son of a friend, recently dead, had sought him to complain of some trickery by which he had been deprived of a portion of his inheritance. A certain old man, to whom the deceased had intrusted a considerable sum, denied the trust and refused to make restitution. Do you know what Garrick did? Arrayed in the attire of the dead, he played the ghost, and played it so well that the wretch, terrified beyond measure, made confession and restored the property." "I never heard the anecdote; it is curious," said Reynolds, taking a pinch of snuff. He extended the open box to the actress, but she refused it with a slight grimace. "You make a mistake," he said; "this is some 37, Hardham's; our _élégantes_ prefer it to any other." Then after a brief pause he added, "Your physiognomy is scarcely less changeable than Garrick's; you have laughed, you have wept; you have been gay, excited, mournful. Now, of all these expressions which have chased each other over your charming face--nay, do not blush; I am an old man--of all these varied expressions which is the veritable, the dominant one,--the one which expresses the character of your soul? As long as I fail to discover this expression in the model, so long is my brush paralyzed. I am obliged to seek until I find it. I have painted Garrick both in tragedy and comedy; Admiral Keppel, sword in hand, upon the point of giving the order to clear the decks for action; Kitty Fisher, at her toilet, since it was her profession to be beautiful and to please. I have represented Goldsmith writing the final pages of the 'Vicar' or the sweet verses of the 'Deserted Village'; Sterne, thinking of poor Maria's suffering or of the death of Lieut. Lefèvre. His wig was all awry and the rascal wanted to straighten it. 'Let it be as it is!' I said to him; 'if it is straight, you are no longer the author of 'Tristram Shandy.' When I paint a child I give it some playthings; a young mother, I surround her with her children. Notice this one, for instance--" "That is my comrade, Mrs. Hartley."