If she looked down on the scene
below, it was only that the beholder might see that she saw and did not
care--that not a feather of her outspread pinions would quiver at the
sight. Sometimes she would stand in the crowd, as if she had been copied
there from another picture, and had nothing to do with this one, nor any
right to be in it at all. Or when the red blood was trickling drop by drop
from the crushed limb, she might be seen standing nearest, smiling over a
primrose or the bloom on a peach. Some had said that she was the painter's
wife; that she had been false to him; that he had killed her; and, finding
that that was no sufficing revenge, thus half in love, and half in deepest
hate, immortalized his vengeance. But it was now universally understood
that it was his daughter, of whose loveliness extravagant reports went
abroad; though all said, doubtless reading this from her father's
pictures, that she was a beauty without a heart. Strange theories of
something else supplying its place were rife among the anatomical
students.
Pages:
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159