his eyes. She gloried in his success; her cheek was aflame at praise, rising occasionally to enthusiasm, from the lips of men whose judgment was held paramount in the realm of Art. But there were times when she herself remained silent—times when those who knew her as well as I did saw clearly that she did not wholly like the picture on the easel before us. She was too honest to pretend, and affection did not render her blind. She was glad that others did not see it as she saw it; she was glad when they spoke comfortable words; and she herself held her peace. But I am inclined to think that, in strict privacy, she occasionally pointed out, and solicited the modification of, some needless insistence on ugliness; and, what is more remarkable, that now and again he yielded to the solicitation. I saw limbs, laboriously unfinished, grow firm and tangible; fingers that looked ready, like Daphne's, to sprout into twigs, become prehensive; the one ill-disposed feature in a sitter's face lose something of its aggressiveness. And I guessed how these changes had been brought to pass.
Alaric had not wasted the firstfruits of his manhood on other women; none had ever gained any real ascendency over him, and, in her own field, Elizabeth's was complete. That it affected his art, except on rare occasions, I am not prepared to say; but that it softened his manners, and widened his sympathies in the world at large, I feel sure. At Whiteburn, though the management of the estate was entirely in Elizabeth's own hands, he played the part of host with an urbanity which would have astonished those who had only seen him at Madame Martineau's; and which won over most of the neighbours,
