I can't remember the name of the painter--I am not sure that it was
known--but this photograph might have been taken from the painting.
There was the same imaginative sadness in both faces, the same haunting
beauty of feature, and one surmised that there must be the same rich
darkness of colouring. The only striking difference was that the man in
the photograph looked much older than the original of the portrait, and
I remembered that the lady who had engaged me was the second wife of Mr.
Vanderbridge and some ten or fifteen years younger, I had heard, than
her husband.
"Have you ever seen a more wonderful face?" asked Mrs. Vanderbridge.
"Doesn't he look as if he might have been painted by Titian?"
"Is he really so handsome as that?"
"He is a little older and sadder, that is all. When we were married it
was exactly like him." For an instant she hesitated and then broke out
almost bitterly, "Isn't that a face any woman might fall in love with, a
face any woman--living or dead--would not be willing to give up?"
Poor child, I could see that she was overwrought and needed some one to
talk to, but it seemed queer to me that she should speak so frankly to a
stranger. I wondered why any one so rich and so beautiful should ever be
unhappy--for I had been schooled by poverty to believe that money is the
first essential of happiness--and yet her unhappiness was as evident as
her beauty, or the luxury that enveloped her.
Pages:
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279