'Oh no!' said Lucy, rising in confusion. 'Don't get them for me.'
'Come away,' said Eleanor, laughing. 'Never interfere between a man and a
bargain.'
The _padrone_ indeed appeared at the moment. Manisty sent the ladies
downstairs, and the bargaining began.
When he came downstairs ten minutes later a small basket was in his hand.
He offered it to Lucy, while he held out his other hand to Eleanor. The
hand contained two fragments only, but of exquisite quality, one a fine
Artemis head with the Cybele crown, the other merely the mask or shell of a
face, from brow to chin,--a gem of the purest and loveliest Greek work.
Eleanor took them with a critical delight. Her comments were the comments
of taste and knowledge. They were lightly given, without the smallest
pedantry, but Manisty hardly answered them. He walked eagerly to Lucy
Foster, whose shy intense gratitude, covering an inward fear that he had
spent far, far too much money upon her, and that she had indecorously
provoked his bounty, was evidently attractive to him. He told her that he
had got them for a mere nothing, and they sat down on the bench behind
the house together, turning them over, he holding forth, and now and then
discovering through her modest or eager replies, that she had been somehow
remarkably well educated by that old Calvinist uncle of hers.
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