"
"You are the greater sinner of the two," yawned Stanton; "for if I
occasionally keep unseasonable hours at night, you do so habitually
in the morning. Either you are not as brilliant as usual this
evening, or else the country air makes me drowsy. Good-night. We
will take a ride to-morrow, and you can sketch five miles of fence
if you find that you cannot resist your mania for work."
Perhaps Stanton HAD found his friend slightly preoccupied, for, in
spite of the constraint he had put upon himself to appear as usual,
this second and closer view of the face which had taken so strong
a hold upon his fancy did not dissipate his first impressions.
Indeed, they were deepened rather, for he saw again and more clearly
the same marvellous capabilities in the features, and also their
exasperating failure to make a beautiful face.
He dreamed over his project some little time after his friend had
retired, and the conclusion of his revery was:
"I must soon make some progress in my experiment or else decamp, for
that girl's contradictory face is a constant incentive to profanity."
After seeing Mrs. Mayhew, however, he felt that justice required
him to admit that the daughter was a natural and logical sequence;
and in the mother he saw an element more hopelessly inartistic and
disheartening than anything in the girl herself; for even if the
latter could be changed, would not the shadow of the stout and
dressy mother ever fall athwart the picture?
Van Berg retired with the feeling that his project of illuminating
a face by awakening a mind that, as yet, had slept, did not promise
very brilliantly.
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