Now Eve moved about like a queen, among people who never had to think of money. She was taken to see everything that was worth seeing; to hear everything that was worth hearing. She saw all the picture-galleries, and learnt to discriminate between all the schools of modern art. She heard Sarasate, and Hollmann, and Menter, and all the great instrumentalists of her epoch. She never heard of cabs or omnibuses, or fares, or money given for tickets. She was carried hither and thither in a luxurious barouche or a snug brougham, and her place at concert and play was always ready for her—one of the best places in the hall or the theatre. The dressmakers, and bootmakers, and milliners to whom Lady Hartley took her never talked of money; indeed they seemed almost to shudder at any allusion to that vulgar drudge ’twixt man and man. The people at the tailor’s were as interested in the gowns and coats they were to make for her as if they had been works of art for which fame would be the sole recompense. The Frenchwoman who was to make her wedding-gown poohpoohed the question of cost. Expensive, this frisé velvet for the train—yes, that might be, but she would rather make Mademoiselle a present of the fabric than that, with her tall and graceful figure, she should wear anything commonplace or insignificant. Art for art’s sake was ostensibly the motto for all Bond Street.
And Eve had so much to think of that she could not think very seriously about her trousseau. She let Lady Hartley order what she pleased. She, Eve, had her lover to think about; and that was an absorbing theme. She knew his footstep on the pavement below the open window; she knew the sound of the bell when he rang it. If the weather were wet, and he came from Charles Street in a hansom, she knew his way of throwing back the cab doors before the wheels stopped. When he was absent, all her life was made up of thinking about him and listening for his coming. In that morning hour in the drawing-room before he arrived she might have sat to Sir Frederick Leighton for “Waiting” or “Expectancy.”
It was scarcely strange that while John Vansittart was so absorbed in the new delight of his life, John Smith was just a little neglectful of his protégées in Saltero’s Mansion, Chelsea. John Smith had, indeed, no consciousness of being neglectful. If the image of Lisa flashed across his mind in any moment of his full and happy day, it came and went together with the comfortable thought that he had done his duty to that young woman. She had her aunt, her bright and pretty home, her singing-master, and all the delightful hopes and ambitions of an artist who has discovered that she has fortune within her reach. Had he thought of Lisa all day long, he could never have pictured her otherwise than happy and contented.
He was at Covent Garden one evening with his sister and his betrothed, and he saw the Venetian amidst her troops of companions. The opera was William Tell, and Lisa was in short petticoats and Swiss bodice, with gold chains about her neck and arms, and gold daggers in her hair. She looked very pretty, amidst that heterogeneous crew of young, middle-aged, and elderly. He was in the stalls, and at a considerable distance from the stage, and those dark eyes did not find him out and fasten upon him as they had done that other night when he was in Lady Davenant’s box. The sight of her reminded him that it was nearly a month since he had called upon the aunt and niece, and that she ought to have made some progress with her musical training in the interval, progress enough, at any rate, to make the childish creature anxious to report herself to him.
Eve was to be engaged at her dressmaker’s on the following afternoon, in a solemn ordeal described as “trying on;” and Vansittart had been warned by his sister that he must not expect to be favoured with her society until the evening, when they were all to dine in Charles Street. It seemed to him that he could hardly employ this afternoon better than in visiting Fiordelisa and her aunt, whose warm southern hearts would be wounded perhaps if he should seem to have lost all interest in their welfare.
The day was delightful—one of those brilliant afternoons in May which give to West End London the air of an earthly paradise; a paradise of smart shops and smart people, thoroughbred horses and newly built carriages, liveries spick and span from the tailor’s; flowers everywhere—in the carriages, in the shops, on the kerbstone—flowers and fine clothes and spring sunshine. Vansittart walked to Chelsea, glad of an excuse for a walk after the habitual carriage or hansom. He had promised to look at some pictures in Tite Street upon this very afternoon—pictures of that advanced Belgian school whose work he would scarcely care to show to Miss Marchant without a previous inspection—so he availed himself of the opportunity, and called at the painter’s house on his way to Saltero’s Mansion.
He found a room full of people, looking at pictures set round on easels draped with terra-cotta silk, criticizing freely and talking prodigiously. He found himself in the midst of an artistic tea-party. There was a copper kettle singing over a spirit-lamp on a table crowded with Spanish irises, and there
