Gradually a heavy frown contracted
his brow, and his face grew white and stern as he repeated words
that she once had spoken to him: "I meant to compel your respect,
and I thought there was no other way."
"Pharisee, fool that I was! If I had been kind and trustful at
the time her family wronged her, she would not now shrink from me
as if I summed up in my person the whole of that wretched experience.
Even Stanton appreciated my unutterable folly, for he said: "You
looked at her in a way that would have frozen even Jezebel herself,"
and now whenever I glance towards her she is reminded of that
accursed stare. Would it be possible, in painting her likeness
for Mr. Eltinge, to make her face so noble, womanly, and pure, that
she would recognize my present estimate of her character, and so
forgive me in very truth?"
The care and earnestness with which he filled in the outlines of
his sketch proved how zealously he would make the effort. In the
afternoon he drove over to the garden again, and made a careful
drawing of the tree and of Mr. Eltinge sitting beneath it, for Ida,
and he determined to go to the city the following day the he might
avail himself of the resources of his studio, and by the aid of this
hasty sketch make as fine a crayon picture as would be possible,
before her return on Saturday.
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