lanchard,
belonged also to the artistic fraternity. She was an American, she
was young, she was pretty, and she had made her way to Rome alone and
unaided. She lived alone, or with no other duenna than a bushy-browed
old serving-woman, though indeed she had a friendly neighbor in the
person of a certain Madame Grandoni, who in various social emergencies
lent her a protecting wing, and had come with her to Rowland's dinner.
Miss Blanchard had a little money, but she was not above selling her
pictures. These represented generally a bunch of dew-sprinkled roses,
with the dew-drops very highly finished, or else a wayside shrine, and
a peasant woman, with her back turned, kneeling before it. She did backs
very well, but she was a little weak in faces. Flowers, however, were
her speciality, and though her touch was a little old-fashioned and
finical, she painted them with remarkable skill. Her pictures were
chiefly bought by the English. Rowland had made her acquaintance early
in the winter, and as she kept a saddle horse and rode a great deal,
he had asked permission to be her cavalier. In this way they had become
almost intimate. Miss Blanchard's name was Augusta; she was slender,
pale, and elegant looking; she had a very pretty head and brilliant
auburn hair, which she braided with classical simplicity. She talked in
a sweet, soft voice, used language at times a trifle superfine, and made
literary allusions. These had often a patriotic strain, and Rowland had
more than once been irritated by her quotations from Mrs. Sigourney in
the cork-woods of Monte Mario, and from Mr. Willis among the ruins of
Veii. Rowland was of a dozen different minds about her, and was half
surprised, at times, to find himself treating it as a matter of serious
moment whether he liked her or not. He admired her, and indeed there
was something admirable in her combination of beauty and talent, of
isolation and tranquil self-support. He used sometimes to go into the
little, high-niched, ordinary room which served her as a studio, and
find her working at a panel six inches square, at an open casement,
profiled against the deep blue Roman sky. She received him with a
meek-eyed dignity that made her seem like a painted saint on a church
window, receiving the daylight in all her being. The breath of reproach
passed her by with folded wings. And yet Rowland wondered why he did not
like her better. If he failed, the reason was not far to seek. There was
ano