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To this unexpectedly flattering conclusion, of course, she was slow in coming; it was the result of the winter we passed together after Harold had “turned his attention,” as his mother always publicly phrased it, “to art. ” He had declared that we must immediately go abroad that he might study the works of the masters. His mother, I believe, suggested that he might begin with the rudiments nearer home. But apparently he had mastered the rudiments, for she was overruled and we went to Rome. I don’t know how many of the secrets of the masters Harold learned; but we passed a delightful winter. He began his studies with the solemn promptitude which he used in all things, and devoted a great deal of time to copying from the antique in the Vatican and the Capitol. He worked slowly, but with extraordinary precision and neatness, and finished his drawings with exquisite care. He was openly very little of a dogmatist, but on coming to know him you found that he had various principles of which he was extremely tenacious. Several of these related to the proportions of the human body, as ascertained by himself. They constituted, he affirmed, an infallible method for learning to draw. If other artists didn’t know it, so much the worse for them. He applied this rare method persistently all winter, and carried away from Rome a huge portfolio full of neatly shaded statues and statuesquecontadini. At first he had gone into a painters studio with several other pupils, but he took no fancy to either his teacher or his companions, and came home one day in disgust, declaring that he had washed his hands of them. As he never talked about disagreeable things, he said nothing as to w
hat had vexed him; but I guessed that he had received some mortal offence, and I was not surprised that he shouldn’t care to fraternize with the common herd of art-students. They had long, untidy hair, and smoked bad tobacco; they lay no one knew where, and borrowed money and took liberties. Mr. Staines certainly was not a man to refuse a needy friend a napoleon, but he couldn’t forgive a liberty. He took none with himself! We became very good friends, and it was especially for this that I liked him. Nothing is truer than that in the long run we like our opposites;, they’re a change and a rest from ourselves. I confess that my good intentions sometimes clashed with a fatal light-headedness, of which a fair share of trouble had not cured me. In moments of irritation I had a kick of giving the reins to my “sarcasm;” so at least my partners in quadrilles had often called it. At my leisure I was sure to repent, and frank public amends followed fast on the heels of offence. Then I believe I was called generous——not only by my partners in quadrilles. But I had a secret admiration for people who were just, from the first and always, and whose demeanour seemed to shape itself with a sort of harmonious unity, like the outline of a beautiful statue. Harold Staines was a finished gentleman, as we used to say in those days, and I admired him the more that I still had ringing in my ears that eternal refrain of my school-room days——"My child, my child, when will you ever learn to be a lady?” He seemed to me an embodiment of the serene amenities of life, and I didn’t know how very great a personage I thought him until I once overheard a young man in a crowd at St. Peters call himthat confounded prig. Then I came to the conclusion that it was a very coarse and vulgar world, and that Mr. Staines was too good for it.