"Thank you, Daisy," he said, with an indignant laugh, "thank you! I am no one; but I give you the fidgets!"
"Why, what have I done now?" I asked, amazed. "How is it, Cornelius, that I so often offend you without even knowing why?"
"And is not that the exasperating part of the business?" he exclaimed, a little desperately. "If you cared a pin for me, you would know--you would guess."
"If I cared a pin for you!" I began; my tears checked the rest.
He stopped in the act of rising, to look down at me with a strange mixture of love and wrath.
"I'll tell you what, Daisy," he said, and his voice trembled and his lips quivered, "I'll tell you what, it is an odd thing to feel so much anger against you and yet so much fondness. I feel as if I could do anything to you, but I cannot bear to see you shed those few tears. Daisy, have the charity not to weep."
He again sat by me. I checked my tears. He wiped away those that still lingered on my cheek. I looked up at him and asked, a little triumphantly:
"Cornelius, where was the use of your flying out so?"
"You may well say so," he replied, rather bitterly. "Do you think I don't know that if 1 were cool and careless, you would like me none the worse; but what avails the knowledge, since I never can use it against you?"
I laughed at the confession.
"And so that is the end of it," he said, looking somewhat downcast, "there seems to be on me a spell, that will never let me end as I begin.
Oh! Daisy; why do I like you so well? That is the heel of Achilles--the only vulnerable point which, do what I will, renders me so powerless and so weak."
"Then you do like me, you see," I said, smoothing his hair, "spite of all my faults!"
"Yes, I do like you," he replied, returning the caress with a peculiar look, "and yet, Daisy, I am getting rather wearied of this task of Sisyphus, which I am ever doing, and which somehow or other is never done."
"It was the heel of Achilles a while back, and now it is the stone of Sisyphus! What has put you into so mythological a mood?"
Cornelius coloured, then turned pale, but did not answer.
"Surely," I exclaimed, "you are not offended now about a few light words!
Oh. Cornelius," I added, much concerned, "I see matters will never be right until you resume your authority, and I am again your obedient child. If you had always allowed me to consider you as my dear adopted father."--
I stopped short. He had not spoken; he had not moved; he still sat by me, calm, silent and motionless, with his look fixed on the fire and his hand in mine; but as I spoke, there passed something in his face, and even in his eyes, that told me I was probing to the very quick, the wound my careless hand had first inflicted.
"Have I done wrong again?" I asked, dismayed.
"Oh, no!" he replied, negligently; "it is only fair; I was once too careless, too indifferent--the girl has avenged the child--that is all!"
"I am sure I have said something you don't like," I observed, anxiously.
Cornelius took me in his arms and kissed me.
"My good little girl," he said, "you are the best little girl in this world; and if you are only a little girl, you cannot help it--so keep your little heart in peace--and God bless you."
He spoke kindly, and rose, looking down at me with a sort of fondness and pity which did not escape, and which half offended me.
"But I am not a little girl, Cornelius," I replied, in a piqued tone.
"Aren't you?" he said, taking hold of my chin with a smile and look that were not free from irony. "I beg your pardon; I thought you were the little girl that so long made a fool of Cornelius O'Reilly!"
I gave him a surprised look; he laughed and took his hat; I followed him to the door and detained him.
"You are not angry with me!" I observed, uneasily.
"Angry with you!" he said, "no, my pet. What should I be angry for?"
"I don't know, Cornelius; but I am glad you are not angry."
He laughed again, and looked down at me as I stood by him with my hand on his arm, and my upraised face seeking his look; assured me kindly he was not at all angry, and left me. From that evening I could not say that Cornelius was less kind or seemed less fond of me, but I vaguely felt a change in his manner; something lost and gone I could neither understand nor recall. At first I was rather uneasy about it, then I attributed it to his painting, with which he was wholly engrossed. "The Young Girl Reading," had been finished for some time, and he was hard at work on his two Italian pictures. Never did he seem to have loved painting better; never to have given it more of his soul and heart.
I went up to him one mild spring afternoon; I found him looking at his three pictures, and so deeply engrossed that he never heard me until I stood close by him.
"Confess you were admiring them," I said, looking up at him smiling.
He smiled too, but not at me.
"Yes," he replied, quietly, "I see better than any one their merits and their faults; but such as they are, they have given me moments of the purest and most intense pleasure man can know."
He spoke in a low abstracted tone, with a fixed and concentrated gaze. I looked at him again, and found him thin and pale.
"You have been working too hard," I said, "you do not look at all well."
"Don't I?" he replied, carelessly.
"No. Kate made me notice it yesterday, and said 'the boy is in love, I think!' I said 'yes, and painting is the lady.' Confess, Cornelius, you like it better than anything else in this world."
"Yes. Daisy, I do."
"Better than me?"
"Are you a thing?"
"You call me a nice little thing, sometimes."
"And so you are," he answered, smiling. "What do you think of that kneeling woman's attitude?"
"Beautiful, like all you do, Cornelius."
"It is beautiful, Daisy; and, alas! that I should say so, the only truly good thing in the whole picture. Well, no matter; with all my short- comings I am still--thank God for it!--a painter."
"And what a triumph awaits you. Oh! Cornelius, how I long to see it!"
He did not reply. Some imperfection in one of the figures had caught his eye; he was endeavouring to remove it, and appeared lost and intent in the task. I withdrew gently, and paused on the threshold of the door to look at him. He stood before his easel, absorbed in his labour; the light fell on his handsome profile and defined it clearly; his eyes, bent on his canvas, looked as if they could behold nothing else; no breath seemed to issue from his parted lips; he was enjoying in its fulness, the delight and the charm which God has placed in the labour dear to the artist's heart.
In a few days more the pictures were finished and sent to the Academy.
Cornelius felt no fear. His confidence was justified, for he soon learned, on good authority, that "The Young Girl Reading" and the two Italian pieces were not rejected. He expressed neither surprise nor pleasure. Indeed there was altogether about him an air of indifference and _ennui_ that struck his sister. She went up to him as he stood leaning against the mantelpiece, and laying her hand on her arm, she asked a little anxiously--