There, in the gallery of the Academia, his attention had been
attracted by a female student, who was engaged in copying a canvas
of Tintoretto. As it so happened that the traveller was a competent
judge of such matters, he was struck by the goodness of the work,
especially when considered in connection with the appearance of the
artist. She was evidently very young,--a slim, slender girl, whose
girlish figure looked all the more willow-like from the simple
plainness, and what seemed to the Englishman the insufficiency, of
her clothing. For the weather, though not so severe as when it had
half frozen Signor Ercole Stadione, was already very cold,--cold
enough to have depopulated the gallery of its usual crowd of copying
artists. At some distance from the young girl's easel, sitting in a
corner lighted up by a stray ray of sunshine, there was an old woman
busily knitting,--probably the girl's mother, or protectress. And
besides those two, and the Englishman, and a lounging attendant
wrapped in his cloak, there was no other soul in the gallery.
Yet the young student busily plied her task; nor was she surprised
into looking up by the stopping of the stranger behind her chair. He
did not see her face, therefore; and it would be consequently unfair
to imagine that any portion of the interest he could not help
feeling in her was to be attributed to the ordinary charm of a
pretty face, whereas it was really due partly to the artistic merit
of her copy, partly to her bravery in sticking to her work despite
the severity of the season, and partly to her youth and very
apparent poverty.
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