ermore, in plain
prose, she was growing stout. My disappointment amounted very nearly to
complete disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate my covert
inspection, declaring that the lamp was very dim, and that she would ruin
her eyes without more light, rose and fetched a couple of candles from
the mantelpiece, which he placed lighted on the table. In this brighter
illumination I perceived that our hostess was decidedly an elderly woman.
She was neither haggard, nor worn, nor gray; she was simply coarse. The
"soul" which Theobald had promised seemed scarcely worth making such a
point of; it was no deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of
lip and brow. I should have been ready even to declare that that
sanctified bend of the head was nothing more than the trick of a person
constantly working at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was a
trick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the mellow quietude of
her wits, this stately needlewoman dropped a hint that she took the
situation rather less seriously than her friend. When he rose to light
the candles she looked across at me with a quick, intelligent smile, and
tapped her forehead with her forefinger; then, as from a sudden feeling
of compassionate loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank face, she
gave a little shrug and resumed her work.

What was the relation of this singular couple? Was he the most ardent of
friends or the most reverent of lovers? Did she regard him as an
eccentric swain, whose benevolent admiration of her beauty she was not
ill pleased to humour at this small cost of having him climb into her
little parlour and gossip of summer nights? With her decent and sombre
dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly needlework,
she looked like some pious lay-member of a sisterhood, living by special
permission outside her convent walls. Or was she maintained here aloft
by her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might have before him
the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted and untarnished by the struggle
for existence? Her shapely hands, I observed, wore very fair and white;
they lacked the traces of what is called honest toil.

"And the pictures, how do they come on?" she asked of Theobald, after a
long pause.

"Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy and encouragement
give me new faith and ardour."

Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment rather inscrutably, and
then tapping