But, between me and Father Pope, after that little _malentendu_, there was no quarter asked or given. He treated me with a persistent coarse rudeness, and I retaliated with all the interest of wit I dared. I dropped blobs of wax on his spectacles; left his Hagiology open under a drip from the ceiling; put crumbs of cheese in his cabinets of moth to tempt the mice in; and confessed his own most obvious sins to him as mine, for which I accepted furious penances as meekly as a lamb. He hated me, and I contrived at least to give him a substantial reason for such an abuse of his cloth. Now, I will mention one only other little incident before I pass on to the subject of this chapter. I was playing in Wellcot attics on a certain wet afternoon with Patty, when I discovered a locked Bluebeard chamber. “What is it?” I said; but she did not know. I tried the handle; I peered vainly into the keyhole; finally, I took a pin from my hair, and contrived a little pick of it. “O, what are you going to do?” whispered the child, quite scared. “Get in, if I can,” said I. “Don’t!” she said, horrified. “If we are shut out, ’tis for a reason.” “Of course,” I answered. “And it’s no good looking for it on this side of the door.” She clasped her hands in a little paralysis of curiosity while I worked. It was a simple lock, and I was successful. As the door swung open, we saw before us a sky-lit room, wedged under the slope of the roof, and quite empty save for a framed picture, which leaned to the wall back outwards. Patty uttered a tiny cry-- “O, Diana! It’s the portrait!” In a moment, all excitement, we stole in a-tiptoe. The place was very still and ghostly. Only on the dusty canvas itself lay a melancholy grid of light. Palpitating in our sense of guilt, we turned the frame round, let it drop softly back again; and there, before our eyes, bloomed a smiling, wistful face. The light, which had saddened it in reverse, was quickened now to an illuminating glory. It greeted and dimpled to us--the face of a dead woman risen. A dead woman. Had she ever lived? I could not believe it, thinking of that unsympathetic _dévote_ downstairs. “Was she _ever_ like that?” I whispered. “She was beautiful,” murmured Patty fervently. “I remember him painting this.” “And going away, and leaving it unfinished?” said I: for, indeed, the portrait was but sketched in, though masterly in its promise. “Yes,” said the little girl, gulping. “And I never supposed what had become of it till now.” It seemed incredible, the change that but a few envious years had wrought. Had love done this thing before me? Or could love forsaken so warp the loveliness which Love himself had created? It gave me a new little thrill of respect for the humanised Sophia; because, whatever the truth of her face, a man had been found to see this beauty in it. “She was St. Cecilia,” whispered Patty. “There is the harp in her lap.”