When Caley returned, she answered to her knock that she was lying
down, and wanted to sleep. She was, however, trying to force further
communication from the note. In it the painter told her that he was
going to set out the next morning for Italy, and that her portrait
was at the shop of certain carvers and gliders, being fitted with
a frame for which he had made drawings. Three times she read it,
searching for some hidden message to her heart; she held it up
between her and the light; then before the fire till it crackled
like a bit of old parchment; but all was in vain: by no device,
intellectual or physical, could she coax the shadow of a meaning
out of it, beyond what lay plain on the surface. She must, she
would see him again.
That night she was merrier than usual at dinner; after it, sang
ballad after ballad to please Liftore; then went to her room and
told Caley to arrange for yet a visit, the next morning, to Mr
Lenorme's studio. She positively must, she said, secure her father's
portrait ere the ill tempered painter--all men of genius were
hasty and unreasonable--should have destroyed it utterly, as he
was certain to do before leaving--and with that she showed her
Lenorme's letter. Caley was all service, only said that this time
she thought they had better go openly.
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