Arriving thus at the lower end of the room, Luca stopped with a
fresh argument on his lips before his statue of Minerva. He had
dusted it already, but he lovingly returned to dust it again. It
was his favorite work--the only good likeness (although it did
assume to represent a classical subject) of his dead daughter
that he possessed. He had refused to part with it for Maddalena's
sake; and, as he now approached it with his brush for the second
time, he absently ceased speaking, and mounted on a stool to look
at the face near and blow some specks of dust off the forehead.
Nanina thought this a good opportunity of escaping from further
importunities. She was on the point of slipping away to the door
with a word of farewell, when a sudden exclamation from Luca Lomi
arrested her.
"Plaster!" cried the master-sculptor, looking intently at that
part of the hair of the statue which lay lowest on the forehead.
"Plaster here!" He took out his penknife as he spoke, and removed
a tiny morsel of some white substance from an interstice between
two folds of the hair where it touched the face. "It _is_
plaster!" he exclaimed, excitedly. "Somebody has been taking a
cast from the face of my statue!"
He jumped off the stool, and looked all round the studio with an
expression of suspicious inquiry. "I must have this cleared up,"
he said. "My statues were left under Rocco's care, and he is
answerable if there has been any stealing of casts from any one
of them.
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