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"She had a special gift on coming of age, and she has been looking about for an opportunity for throwing it away" my wife had never sympathized with my cousin, Maud Vantweekle. "She had better save it for her trousseau, if she goes on much more with that young professor. Aunt Mary should look after her." Watkins rose to go. "Hold on a minute," I said.
The next morning Mr. Williams telegraphed you and set off." He waited. "And when he returned?" "It's been hell ever since." He was in no condition to see the comic side of the affair. Nor was Miss Vantweekle. She was on my wife's bed in tears. "All poor Aunt Higgins's present gone into that horrid thing," she moaned, "and all the dresses I was planning to get in Paris.
"Let me present this to you, Miss Vantweekle," he pronounced, solemnly, "as an engagement token. I, I exchanged my picture for them this morning." "Some Asti Spumante, Ricci." "To the rejected Titian " I suggested for the first toast. VENICE, May, 1896. The two black horses attached to the light buggy were chafing in the crisp October air.
Williams tremendously, and I valued his opinion about art subjects much more then than I do now. He and Mrs. Williams were wild over it. They had just bought their picture, and they wanted us each to have one. They have lots of sentiment, you know." "Lots," I assented. "Mrs. Williams got at me, and well, she made me feel that it would bring me nearer to Miss Vantweekle.
Of course it doesn't matter what he says about my picture, whether it is a copy or not, but Miss Vantweekle takes it very hard about hers. She blames me for having been with her when she bought it, and having advised her and encouraged her to put six hundred dollars into it." "Six hundred," I gasped. "Cheap for a Bonifazio, or a Titian, as we thought it." "Too cheap," I murmured.
"I must say that Miss Vantweekle held off some time, was doubtful about the picture; didn't feel that she wanted to put all her money into it. But she caught fire in the general excitement, and I may say" here a sad sort of conscious smile crept over the young professor's face "at that time I had a good deal of influence with her.
Williams bought, that Savoldo or Domenico Tintoretto, and prowled about the churches and the galleries finding traces of it here in the style of this picture and that; in short, we all got into a fever about pictures, and Miss Vantweekle invested all the money an aunt had given her before coming abroad, in that Bonifazio.
Williams said: no small man could have planned it. One night we had been talking for hours about them, and we were all pretty well excited. Mr. Williams suggested getting Watkins's opinion. Maud Miss Vantweekle said, loftily, 'Oh! it does not make any difference what the critics say about it, the picture means everything to me'; and I, like a fool, felt happier than ever before in my life.
He would sit glowering at Maud and Watkins while they held whispered conversations at the other end of the hall. Watkins was the hero. He had accepted Flugel's judgment with impudent grace. "A copy of Titian, of course," he said to me; "really, it is quite hard on poor Miss Vantweekle. People, even learned people, who don't know about such things, had better not advise.
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