child. The quickness of the transition made me vaguely ask myself
if he were perchance henpecked--a shocking surmise which I instantly
dismissed. Mrs. Ambient was quite such a wife as I should have
expected him to have; slim and fair, with a long neck and pretty eyes
and an air of good breeding. She shone with a certain coldness and
practised in intercourse a certain bland detachment, but she was
clothed in gentleness as in one of those vaporous redundant scarves
that muffle the heroines of Gainsborough and Romney. She had also a
vague air of race, justified by my afterwards learning that she was
"connected with the aristocracy." I have seen poets married to women
of whom it was difficult to conceive that they should gratify the
poetic fancy--women with dull faces and glutinous minds, who were
none the less, however, excellent wives. But there was no obvious
disparity in Mark Ambient's union. My hostess--so far as she could
be called so--delicate and quiet, in a white dress, with her
beautiful child at her side, was worthy of the author of a work so
distinguished as "Beltraffio." Round her neck she wore a black
velvet ribbon, of which the long ends, tied behind, hung down her
back, and to which, in front, was attached a miniature portrait of
her little boy. Her smooth shining hair was confined in a net. She
gave me an adequate greeting, and Dolcino--I thought this small name
of endearment delightful--took advantage of her getting up to slip
away from her and go to his father, who seized him in silence and
held him high for a long moment, kissing him several times.

I had lost no time in observing that the child, not more than seven
years old, was extraordinarily beautiful. He had the face of an
angel--the eyes, the hair, the smile of innocence, the more than
mortal bloom. There was something that deeply touched, that almost
alarmed, in his beauty, composed, one would have said, of elements