at mean? Ye go beyond me,
mistress."

"'Tis a resolute chin. Not a jot too resolute for this wicked world; but
when ye come to a Madonna? No thank you."

"Well I never. A resolute chin."

Denys. "The darling!"

"And now comes the rub. When you told me she was--the way she is, it
gave me a shock; I dropped my brushes. Was I going to turn a girl, that
couldn't keep her lover at a distance, into the Virgin Mary, at my time
of life? I love the poor ninny still. But I adore our blessed Lady.
Say you, 'a painter must not be peevish in such matters'? Well, most
painters are men; and men are fine fellows. They can do aught. Their
saints and virgins are neither more nor less than their lemans, saving
your presence. But know that for this very reason half their craft
is lost on me, which find beneath their angels' white wings the very
trollops I have seen flaunting it on the streets, bejewelled like Paynim
idols, and put on like the queens in a pack o' cards. And I am not a
fine fellow, but only a woman, and my painting is but one half craft,
and t'other half devotion. So now you may read me. 'Twas foolish,
maybe, but I could not help it; yet am I sorry." And the old lady ended
despondently a discourse which she had commenced in a'mighty defiant
tone.

"Well, you know, dame," observed Catherine, "you must think it would go
to the poor girl's heart, and she so fond of ye?"

Margaret Van Eyck only sighed.

The Frisian girl, after biting her lips impatiently a little while,
turned upon Catherine. "Why, dame, think you 'twas for that alone
Margaret and Peter hath left Sevenbergen? Nay."

"For what else, then?"

"What else? Why, because Gerard's people slight her so cruel. Who would
bide among hard-hearted folk that ha' driven her lad t' Italy, and now
he is gone, relent not, but face it out, and ne'er come anigh her that
is left?"

"Reicht, I was going."

"Oh, ay, going, and going, and going. Ye should ha' said less or else
done more. But with your words you did uplift her heart and let it down
wi' your deeds. 'They have never been,' said the poor thing to me, with
such a sigh. Ay, here is one can feel for her: for I too am far from my
friends, and often, when first I came to Holland, I did used to take a
hearty cry all to myself. But ten times liever would I be Reicht Heynes
with nought but the leagues atw'een me and all my kith, than be as she
is i' the midst of them that ought to warm to her, and yet to fare as
lon