The Argosy — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

40 Princess Eleanor. altogether an impossibility. Fancy my misery when I tell you that I cannot bring myself to ask Ernest this question, and yet I used to tell him all that puzzled me. But now he would explain to me that the Fornarina had no family to take into consideration, and that it entirely depended upon me to turn Arsent into my Raphael! Oh, if I only had but one good reason against it! ‘My kingdom for a reason!” I should like to exclaim. If I could say that I prefer Werdan to Arsent, I believe Ernest would send them both away, but there would not be a word of truth in that assertion. Emest spoke kindly, but seriously. He told me that I had no right to reject a man, in every respect eligible, for a mere fancy, and that he would leave me a month’s time to consider. Well, I am considering, and getting quite gloomy about it. I scarcely brighten up during the drawing lessons which, for two hours every day, Herr Impach gives me. I draw from the photographs we brought with us from Italy, and I cannot help sighing sometimes, as the sight of them brings back the recollection of the happiest days of my life, when art alone filled every hour with the purest delight. Herr Impach seems to feel something similar to this. When I laid on the table the album we had chosen together, I wished to remind him of times past and gone, and thank him for all he had contributed to render them so happy. As I looked up and opened my lips to speak, I met-his eyes, and the expression in them showed that he too remembered. We could neither of us have said more than that look implied, so I only bent down my head, and gave him my hand across the album. , He, I feel sure, would find me some good reason against a marriage with Arsent, if I dared to ask him. But I do not think that Ernest would approve my consulting him on so important a matter. Cannot you help me with advice, my clever little Amy ? The drawing lessons are not the only hours Herr Impach spends in our house. He sits in the gallery the whole morning, copying I know not which of our pictures. I am not allowed to visit him there, because the large rooms cannot be properly heated, and cousin Dorothy caught cold the first time she went there this winter, so that she watches me anxiously, and will not allow me to put my foot into that part of the house. I do not much care, for it always makes me angry to see Herr Impach copy paintings when he could put his talent to far higher aims. I have not one pleasant thing to tell you in this letter—everything is disagreeable. Ernest is going away for a few weeks. When he returns, he expects my decision to be given. I know that I shall have got no further than to-day, as my mind is made up already. Snowdrop is my only comfort in all this I nurse the flowers that urround it ; and when I begin to feel unhappy, I sit down opposite to it for some time. I am sure to derive some consolation-from it;and comicbooks.com