Poor child! She had my sympathy, and has still. What a grudge she must
owe us tourists, even the tamest and most submissive of us, for whom she
is thus compelled to tax her unwilling memory!
But if her spirits were damped, her good-humor threatened, it was for a
minute only. Upon completing our rapid survey of my lord's parlor, and
looking round for the guide who should conduct us farther, she had
become invisible. So we moved on without her, and commenced exploring a
narrow passage with a certain sense of bewilderment at its loneliness,
and the doubt whither it might lead, when, suddenly, we were startled by
a merry laugh, which seemed to ring through the air directly above our
heads. Was it a mocking spirit that haunted the place? or one of the old
figures on the tapestry, started into life? We looked up, and there, on
a rough platform of pine boards, projecting from the wall, stood our
Fenella. She was leaning over the shoulder of an artist-boy, who, seated
at his easel, was copying one of the Gorgon-heads that stood out on the
faded tapestry. She had dismissed us wholly from her thoughts, and,
giving play to her native fun and coquetry, was taunting the youth with
the slowness of his labors and the little progress he had made since she
last inspected his work.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44