With her slenderness, her grace, her brilliant darkness, she seemed to
him to belong in one of the English mezzotints on the wall.
"Did you buy that print because it is so much like you?" he asked,
pointing to an engraving after Hoppner's portrait of the Duchess of
Bedford.
She laughed frankly. "Every one asks me that. I suppose it was one of my
reasons."
As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly
over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich
mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the
bewitching face of Lady Hamilton as it shone back at him from the prints
of John Jones, of Cheesman, of Henry Meyer. Was not Corinna's place
among those vanished beauties of a richer age, rather than among the
sour-faced reformers and the Gideon Vetches of to-day? The wonderful
tone of the old prints, the silvery dusk, or the softly glowing colours
that were like the sunset of another century; the warmth and splendour
of the few brocades she had picked up in Italy; the suave religious
feeling of the worn red velvet from some church in Florence; the candles
in wrought-iron sconces, the shimmering firelight and the dreamy
fragrance of tea roses--all these things together made him think
suddenly of sunshine over the Campagna and English gardens in the month
of May and the burning reds and blues and golden greens of the Middle
Ages.
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