ed
subsequently to inflict upon me. She was a singular, self-conscious,
artificial creature, and I never, subsequently, more than half
penetrated her motives and, mysteries. Of one thing I am sure, however:
that they were considerably less extraordinary than her appearance
announced. Miss Ambient was a restless, disappointed, imaginative
spinster, consumed with the love of Michael-Angelesque attitudes and
mystical robes; but I am pretty sure she had not in her nature those
depths of unutterable thought which, when you first knew her, seemed
to look out from her eyes and to prompt her complicated gestures. Those
features, in especial, had a misleading eloquence; they rested upon
you with a far-off dimness, an air of obstructed sympathy, which was
certainly not always a key to the spirit of their owner; and I
suspect that a young lady could not really have been so dejected and
disillusioned as Miss Ambient looked, without having committed a crime
for which she was consumed with remorse, or parted with a hope which
she could not sanely have entertained. She had, I believe, the usual
allowance of vulgar impulses: she wished to be looked at, she wished to
be married, she wished to be thought original. It costs me something to
speak in this irreverent manner of Mark Ambient's sister, but I shall
have still more disagreeable things to say before I have finished my
little anecdote, and moreover,--I confess it,--I owe the young lady a
sort of grudge. Putting aside the curious cast of her face, she had
no natural aptitude for an artistic development,--she had little real
intelligence. But her affectations rubbed off on her brother's renown,
and as there were plenty of people who disapproved of him totally, they
could easily point to his sister as a person formed by his influence. It
was quite possible to regard her as a warning, and she had done him but
little good with the world at large. He was the original, and she
was the inevitable imitation. I think he was scarcely aware of the
impression she produced, beyond having a general idea that she made
up very well as a Rossetti; he was used to her, and he was sorry for
her,--wishing she would marry and observing that she did n't Doubtless I
take her too seriously, for she did me no harm, though I am bound to add
that I feel I can only half account for her. She was not so mystical as
she looked, but she was a strange, indirect, uncomfortable, embarrassing
woman. My story will give t