Indeed her flagging
appetite and altered appearance did not make much feigning on her
part necessary.
She had evidently heard the conversation just narrated; and she
believed that Van Berg had echoed the child's belief in regard to
Miss Burton more in truth than in jest.
The ruling passion of the artist was aroused. A plain woman might
have looked unutterable things, and he would have passed on with a
shrug, or but a thought of commiseration. But that oval, downcast
face followed him. Its sadness and pain interested him because
conveyed to his eye by a perfect contour.
"Was it a trick?" he thought, "or a fortuitous combination of the
features themselves, that enabled them to express so much! It must
be so, for surely the shallow coquette had not much to express."
"A plague on the perversity of nature," he exclaimed, "to give the
girl such features. If Jennie Burton had them, she would be the
ideal woman of the world."
The practical result, however, was that he half forgot during dinner
that she was "the best woman that ever lived" in his furtive effort
to study Ida's face in its present aspect; and that he also spent
most of the afternoon in his room sketching it from memory.
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