"Very well. I shall come in an hour. You seem to me a very honest girl.

Have confidence in me. I am something of a bear, but I understand more things than one. We shall arrange this affair, and the trouble will pass. Ah! yes, one point more. I do not wish to give you money at once, for you would have to explain the matter; but in an hour I will bring all that is needed on account. I too had troubles formerly, and know what prompt aid means. You have nothing to give thanks for, a trifle!

Till we meet again--in an hour."

So, after he had asked again for her address, he conducted the girl to the steps; and, when an hour had passed, he took his seat in a carriage and gave directions to drive to Old Nice.

All that had happened seemed to him so peculiar that he could think of nothing else. He felt too the delight which every honest man feels when he has acted as he ought, and when he may become a providence to some person.

"If that is not an honest and a good girl," thought he of Panna Cervi, "I am the dullest mule in Liguria."

But he did not admit that anything similar could happen. On the contrary, he felt that he had struck a very honest woman's soul, and at the same time he was delighted that that soul was enclosed in such a young and beautiful body.

The carriage stopped at last in front of an old and battered house near the harbor. The woman at the gate pointed contemptuously enough to Pani Cervi's apartments.

"Poverty indeed!" thought the artist, as he went up the sloping steps.

After a while he knocked at the door.

"Come in!" answered a voice.

Svirski entered. A woman about forty years of age received him; she was dressed in black; a brunette, sad, thin, evidently broken by life: but she had nothing common about her. At her side stood Panna Maria.

"I know all, and I thank you from my soul and heart!" said Pani Cervi; "may God reward and bless you."

Thus speaking, she caught his hand and bent her head as if to kiss it; but he withdrew the hand quickly; anxious to drive away ceremony at the earliest, and break the ice of first acquaintance, he turned to Panna Maria, and, shaking his finger at her, said, with the freedom of an old acquaintance,--

"Ah, this little girl has let out the secret!"

Panna Maria smiled at him in answer, a little sadly, a little perplexed.

She seemed to him fair, more beautiful than in the studio. He noticed also that she had around her neck a narrow, lily-colored ribbon which she had not worn before; and this touched him still more as a proof that evidently she did not consider him an old grandfather, since she had dressed for him. Then Pani Cervi said,--

"Yes, Maria told everything. God watched over her, and over us, so that she met such a man as you."

"Panna Maria told me of the difficult circumstances in which you are living," answered Svirski; "but, believe me, that even in those circumstances it is happiness to have such a daughter."

"Yes," said Pani Cervi, calmly.

"Meanwhile I owe gratitude to you; for I was looking, and looking in vain, till at last a head fell from heaven to me. Now I am sure of my picture. I must only make sure that my model does not run away!"

Meanwhile, he drew out three hundred francs and forced Pani Cervi to take them, assuring her that he would make a great profit, for he would receive much money, thanks to Panna Maria; and then he declared that he would like to make the acquaintance of the "grandfather," for he had always had a weakness for old soldiers.

Hearing this, Panna Maria ran to the adjoining chamber; soon the noise of a wheeled chair was heard, and the grandfather was rolled into the room. Evidently the old man had been prepared to receive the guest, for he was in uniform, with all his orders acquired in Italy. Svirski saw before him an old man whose face had grown small and wrinkled; his moustaches and hair were white as milk; his blue eyes opened widely, and looked something like the eyes of an infant.

"Grandfather," said Maria, bending over him in such fashion that the old man could see her lips, and speaking not in a loud voice, but slowly and precisely, "this is Pan Svirski, a fellow-countryman and an artist."

The old man turned his blue eyes toward the visitor, and looked at him persistently, meanwhile blinking as if summoning his mind.

"A fellow-countryman?" repeated he. "Yes!--a fellow-countryman."

Then he smiled, looked at his daughter, his granddaughter, and again at Svirski; he sought words for a time, and asked at last, with an aged, trembling voice,--

"And what will there be in spring?"

Evidently there remained to him some single thought, which had outlived all the others, but which he had not been able to express. So, after a while, he leaned his trembling head against the back of the chair, and began to look at the window, smiling, however, at that thought, and repeating,--

"Yes, yes! It will be!"

"Grandfather always acts that way," said Maria.

Svirski looked at him for a time with emotion; then Pani Cervi began to speak of her father and her husband. Both had taken part in the wars against Austria for Italian independence. They had lived some time in Florence; and only after the occupation of Rome did they return to Nice, where Cervi's family originated. There Orysevich gave his daughter to his young comrade in arms. Both men found places in the bank, thanks to relatives in Nice. All succeeded well till Cervi was killed in a railroad accident, a few years before, and Orysevich lost his place through old age. From that time their trouble began, for the only capital which the three persons had to support them was sixty lires, which the Italian government gave the old man. That was enough to keep them from dying, but not enough to give them life. The two women earned a little by sewing or teaching; but during summer, when life died away in Nice, when it was impossible to earn anything, their slender supplies were swallowed up. Two years before the old soldier had lost the use of his legs altogether; he was frequently sick, and had to be cared for; through this their condition grew worse and worse.

Svirski, while listening to this narrative, made note of two things.

First, that Pani Cervi did not speak as good Polish as her daughter.

Evidently the old man, in the years of his campaigning, could not devote himself to the education of his daughter in the same degree as he had afterward to the education of his granddaughter. But the second thing was more important for Svirski. "This granddaughter," thought he, "being such a beautiful girl, might, especially in Nice, on that shore where idlers squander millions every year, keep carriages, servants, and have a drawing-room finished in satin. But she wears a threadbare dress, and her only ornament is a faded lily-colored ribbon. There must be some strength which has kept her from evil. For this," said he to himself, "two things are requisite,--pure nature and honorable traditions; there is no doubt that I have found both."

And he began to have a pleasant feeling among those people. He noticed also that poverty had not destroyed in the two women traces of good-breeding, a certain elegance which comes from within and seems inborn. Both mother and daughter had received him as a providence; but in their words and manners one could notice more delight at making the acquaintance of an honest man, than at the aid which he brought them. It might be that the three hundred francs which he left with the mother saved the family from many cares and humiliations, but still he felt that mother and daughter were more thankful to him because he had acted in the studio like a man of true and tender heart, who understood the girl's pain, her modesty, and sacrifice. But to him the greatest pleasure came from noting that in Panna Maria's timidity, and in her charming glances, there was an anxiety which a young girl might experience before a man to whom she feels obliged with her whole soul, but who at the same time, according to Svirski's expression, "is not out of the current yet." He was forty-five years of age, but, in spite of a young heart, he began at moments to doubt himself, so that the lily-colored ribbon and this observation caused him real pleasure.

Finally, he talked to them with the same respect and attention as with women of the best society, and, seeing that he entertained them more and more by this means, he felt satisfied. At parting, he pressed the hands of both; and when Panna Maria returned the pressure, with drooping eyelashes, but with all the strength of her warm young hand, he went out a little dazed, and with a head so full of the fair model that the driver of the carriage in which he took a seat had to ask him twice where he wished to go.

On the road he thought that it would not do to put the head of "Panna Maria" on a body naked to the waist, and he began to persuade himself that even for the picture it would be better to cast some light drapery over the bosom of the sleeping maiden.

"When I get back, I will bring in the first model I find, and work the picture over, so that to-morrow the thing will be ready," said he to himself.

Then it occurred to him that still he would not be able to hire such a model as Panna Cervi permanently and take her with him; at this thought he was sorry.

Meanwhile the carriage stopped at the studio. Svirski paid, and stepped out.

"A despatch for you," said the concierge.

The artist was roused as if from sleep.

"Ah! Very well, give it here!" And taking the despatch, he opened it impatiently.

But he had scarcely cast his eyes on it, when astonishment and terror were reflected on his face, for the telegram was as follows:--

Kresovich shot himself an hour ago. Come.

HELENA.

CHAPTER VII.

Pani Elzen met Svirski with a troubled and excited face; her eyes were dry, but reddened, as if from fever, and full of impatience.

"Have you received no letter?" inquired she, hurriedly.

"No. I have received nothing but your telegram. What a misfortune!"

"I thought that perhaps he had written to you."