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Updated: June 2, 2025
As we passed it next morning I recognised the path which led up to Valeria's cottage, and shortly after observed that young woman herself coming up the glen. "Holloa!" I said, with great presence of mind as she drew near, "my lovely model, I declare! Just you ride on, old fellow, while I stop and ask her when she can come and sit to me again."
Fabio became an artist of distinction no longer a mere amateur, but a real master. Valeria's mother rejoiced, and thanked God as she looked upon the happy pair. Four years flew by unperceived, like a delicious dream. One thing only was wanting to the young couple, one lack they mourned over as a sorrow: they had no children ... but they had not given up all hope of them.
And consequently the poor pedant dined on the remnants left after his employer and her husband had cleared the board; and had rancid oil and sour wine given him, when they enjoyed the best. The slaves had snubbed him and made fun of him; the freedmen regarded him with absolute disdain; Valeria's regular visitors treated him as a nonentity.
"You did, indeed, serve me an awkward trick some time since; but who can blame you for wanting to save your own skin. Pisander and Arsinoë and Semiramis have kept the secret that I'm alive very well, for in some ways it shouldn't come to Valeria's ears. My story later. Where's her most noble ladyship?"
I think I was unconsciously attracted by this very difference. Valeria's opposition to the Pope was so serious and whole-souled, that it seemed to invest his cause with new dignity, and in argument with her I acquired increased respect for my own theories and for myself as capable of sustaining them.
Now the colonel was a very pompous man, and the document he had just discovered on the priest added to his sense of self-importance. When, therefore, a large, carefully folded paper was produced from the neighbourhood of Valeria's lovely bosom his eyes sparkled with admiration. "Ho, ho!" he exclaimed, as he clutched it eagerly, "the plot is thickening!"
"At least you have your work to live for, which is to live for many, instead of for one or two." "Ah, that does not satisfy the heart." "What does?" Hadria exclaimed. Anxiety about Professor Fortescue now made a gloomy background to the responsibilities of Hadria's present life. Valeria's occasional visits were its bright spots. She looked forward to them, with pathetic eagerness.
Valeria's cosmetic vials were for once put into play for a purpose, and when Artemisia reappeared from the dressing-room after her treatment, Agias saw before him no longer a fair-skinned little Greek, but a small, slender, but certainly very handsome Egyptian serving-lad, with bronzed skin, conspicuous carmine lips, and features that Arsinoë's paint and pencils had coarsened and exaggerated.
She did not speak for some time, and when she did, her words seemed to have no direct reference to Valeria's question. "I believe that there are thousands and thousands of women whose lives have run on parallel lines with mine."
Some weeks had now passed since the arrival of the two Professors. The meetings in the Priory garden had been frequent. They had affected for the better Professor Theobald's manner. Valeria's laws had curbed the worst side of him, or prevented it from shewing itself so freely. He felt the atmosphere of the little society, and acknowledged that it was "taming the savage beast."
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