Part 66 (1/2)

'”That,” I said, ”is--is quite impossible.”

'”It is true,” he said. And then again we sat silent.

'Then I said to him with great firmness, ”Mr. D'Arcy, I'm only a peasant girl, but I'm Welsh; I have faith in you, faith in your goodness and faith in your kindness to me; but I must insist upon knowing how I came here, and how you and I were brought together.”

'He smiled, and said, ”I was right in thinking that your face expresses a good deal of what we call character. I should have preferred waiting for a day or two before relating all I have to tell,” he said, ”in answer to what you ask, but as you _insist_ upon having it now,” with a playful kind of smile, ”it would be ill-bred for me to insist that you must wait. But before I begin, would it not be better if you were to tell me something of what occurred to yourself when you were taken ill at Raxton?”

'”Then will your story begin where mine breaks off?” I said.

'”We shall see that,” he said, ”as soon as you have ended yours.”

'”Do you know Raxton?” I said.

'At first he seemed to hesitate about his reply, and then said,

'”No, I do not.”

'I then told him in as few words as I could our adventures on the sands on the night of the landslip, and my search for my father's body afterwards, until I suddenly sank down in a fit. When I had finished Mr. D'Arcy was silent, and was evidently lost in thought. At last he said,

'”My story, I perceive, cannot begin where yours breaks off. I first became acquainted with you in the studio of a famous painter named Wilderspin, one of the n.o.blest-minded and most admirable men now breathing, but a great eccentric.”

'”Why, Mr. D'Arcy, I never was in a studio in my life until to-day,”

I said.

'”You mean, Miss Wynne, that you were not consciously there,” he said. ”But in that studio you certainly were, and the artist, who reverenced you as a being from another world, was painting your face in a beautiful picture. While he was doing this you were taken seriously ill, and your life was despaired of. It was then that I brought you into the country, and here you have been living and benefiting by the kind services of Mrs. t.i.twing for a long time.”

'”And you know nothing of my history previously to seeing me in the London studio?” I asked.

'”All that I could ever learn about that,” said he, in what seemed to me a rather evasive tone, ”I had to gather from the incoherent and rambling talk of Wilderspin, a religious enthusiast whose genius is very nearly akin to mania. He was so struck by you that he actually believed you to be not a corporeal woman at all; he believed you had been sent from the spirit-world by his dead mother to enable him to paint a great picture.”

'”Oh, I must see him, and make him tell me all,” I said.

'”Yes,” said he, ”but not yet.”

'What Mr. D'Arcy told me,' said Winnie, 'affected me so deeply that I remained silent for a long time. Then came a thought which made me say,

'”You. too, are a painter, Mr. D'Arcy?”

'”Yes,” he said.

'”During the months that I have been living here have you used me as your model?”

'”No; but that was not because I did not wish to do so.”

'Then he suddenly looked in my face and said,

'”Is your family entirely Welsh, Miss Wynne?”

'”Entirely,” I said. ”But why did you not use me as your model, Mr.

D'Arcy?”