!" I exclaimed, joyfully. "Heaven be thanked! Did you say
your father's?"

She looked up surprised, then smiled, and faintly blushed.

"I did," she replied.

"And was your father a soldier?" I asked; for the sword looked more like
a sword of ceremony than a sword for service.

But to this question she gave no direct reply.

"It was his sword," she said, "and he had the best of all rights to wear
it."

With this she kissed the weapon reverently, and restored it to its
place.

I kissed her hand quite as reverently that day at parting, and she did
not withdraw it.

CHAPTER XLVII.

ALL ABOUT ART.

Art's a service.

AURORA LEIGH.

"God sent art, and the devil sent critics," said Mueller, dismally
paraphrasing a popular proverb. "My picture is rejected!"

"Rejected!" I echoed, surprised to find him sitting on the floor, like a
tailor, in front of an acre of canvas. "By whom?"

"By the Hanging Committee."

"Hang the Hanging Committee!"

"A pious prayer, my friend. Would that it could be carried into
execution!"

"What cause do they assign?"

"Cause! Do you suppose they trouble themselves to find one? Not a bit of
it. They simply scrawl a great R in chalk on the back of it, and send
you a printed notice to carry it home again. What is it to them, if a
poor devil has been painting his very heart and hopes out, day after
day, for a whole year, upon that piece of canvas? Nothing, and less than
nothing--confound them!"

I drew a chair before the picture, and set myself to a patient study of
the details. He had chosen a difficult subject--the death of Louis XI.
The scene represented a spacious chamber in the Castle of
Plessisles-Tours. To the left, in a great oak chair beside the bed from
which he had just risen, sat the dying king, with a rich, furred mantle
loosely thrown around him. At his feet, his face buried in his hands,
kneeled the Dauphin. Behind his chair, holding up the crucifix to enjoin
silence, stood the king's confessor. A physician, a couple of
councillors in scarlet robes, and a captain of archers, stood somewhat
back, whispering together and watching the countenance of the dying man;
while through the outer door was seen a crowd of courtiers and pages,
waiting to congratulate King Charles VIII. It was an ambitious subject,
and Mueller had conceived it in a grand spirit. The heads were
expressive; and the textures of the velvets, tapestries, oak carvings,
and so forth, had bee