Just then, on passing through a ruined arch overgrown with ivy and red sprays of creepers, they came upon an artist sitting making sketches. He was a little man with white hair and intensely black eyes, and a crooked thin-lipped mouth, very humorous. His hands were long and claw-like and very white, full of an intellectual beauty. He was sitting on an old tree-stump, that had big gnarled roots sprouting away from it like coils of serpents. His whole appearance presented some subtle jest--to Marigold at least. She could have laughed--was laughing--when suddenly the cold blaze of those black eyes turned on her as he looked up for the moment from his work. The spirit died out of her laughter, though her lips still remained parted in a smile--a frozen, mirthless kind of thing to the observant eye; and suddenly she put her hand in Alice’s--Alice, so big and broad and unbeautiful, brought up a Materialist, with vague ideas of Heaven for all that. And Alice, slow to feel, yet very motherly with all her limitations, pressed the soft white hand in hers, unconscious of the suddenly chilled blood running in her mistress’s veins. Marigold hastened her steps with the intention of passing him, but once having looked at her, he continued doing so, and he took no pains to hide that her evident embarrassment amused him. “Good-morning, ladies,” said he, and there was a certain richness in his voice that almost miraculously attracted one. “You have just succeeded in spoiling a very pretty picture.” What was there in his tone that set all Marigold’s blood rebelling? She so free from vanity, yet till now so gaily beautiful--what childish, wrong desire perhaps, to throw away the stiff hat and formless jacket and clumsy clogs, and stamp her pretty feet and make the picture still more beautiful? Was it some subtle poison in the words, or something else? But now she reddened and suddenly pitied the poor who have no tricks of graceful dress to help them in their actions. And it was Alice, stolid and fairly insensible, who replied with sturdy nonchalance: “I was just thinking the same of you, sir.” For one second the dark eyes rested on her, then back to Marigold, and, for all his movements were so rapid, there was a deliberation in them quite unaccountable, so that he seemed to have given Alice the coolest of long stares, and it affected the easiness of her tongue somewhat--a certain frozen feeling settled there. With the same easy, graceful motion, almost like a serpent’s movement, he bent forward, leaning his arms upon his knees, finger-tips lightly touching, looking still up at Marigold. “It’s strange that women, who were originally intended to be so beautiful, have such a knack of spoiling things. Is it not?” he said. “I do not understand you, sir,” and she walked on quicker past him, her head suddenly drawn up as by some invisible bearing rein--her hat, coat, and clogs taking on a dignity it had never been their province to wear before.