her
tender lips had seemed to be saddened by a passing thought. She had
not put on the veil again, and he had not meant that a suggestion of
suffering ecstatically borne should dim her glad girlhood in his
picture; but he had seen the vision once, and it had come out again
under his brush, in spite of him, as if it were the necessary truth
over which the outward expression was moulded like a lovely mask, but
which must be plain in her face to every one who had once had a
glimpse of it.

The painter contemplated his work in silence from within an Olympian
cloud of cigarette smoke that almost hid him from the others, who now
exchanged a few words in Italian, which he only half understood. They
spoke English with him, as they would have spoken French with a
Frenchman, and probably even German with a German, for modern Roman
society has a remarkable gift of tongues and is very accomplished in
other ways.

'What I think most wonderful,' said the Marchesa del Prato, who
detested her husband's pretty niece, 'is that he has not made a Carlo
Dolce picture of you, my dear. With your face, it would have been so
easy, you know!'

Giovanni Severi's hands moved a little and the scabbard of his sabre
struck one of his spurs with a sharp clink; for he was naturally
impatient and impulsive, as any one could see from his face. It was
lean and boldly cut; his cheeks were dark from exposure rather than by
nature, there were reddish lights in his short brown hair, and his
small but vigorous moustache was that of a rather fair man who has
lived much in sun and wind in a hot climate. His nose was Roman and
energetic, his mouth rather straight and hard; yet few would have
thought his face remarkable but for the eyes, which betrayed his
nature at a glance; they were ardent rather than merely bold, and the
warm, reddish-brown iris was shot with little golden points that
coruscated in the rays of the sun, but emitted a fiery light of their
own when his temper was roused. If his look had been less frank and
direct, or if his other features had suggested any bad quality, his
eyes would probably have been intolerably disagreeable to meet; as it
was, they warned all comers that their possessor was one of those
uncommon and dangerous men who go to the utmost extremes when they
believe themselves in the right and are constitutionally incapable of
measuring danger or considering consequences when they are roused.
Giovanni Severi was about eight-and