So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blame
myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for a
portrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, _bizarre_
personality. I could not possibly do my subject justice so long as I was
kept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character of the
woman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any more
innocent way of doing so could be found than talking to a woman, and
letting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of ancestors
of hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they had
murdered?--particularly as I studiously respected the prejudices of my
host, and refrained from mentioning the matter, and tried to restrain Mrs.
Oke from doing so, in the presence of William Oke himself.
I had certainly guessed correctly. To resemble the Alice Oke of the year
1626 was the caprice, the mania, the pose, the whatever you may call it, of
the Alice Oke of 1880; and to perceive this resemblance was the sure way of
gaining her good graces. It was the most extraordinary craze, of all the
extraordinary crazes of childless and idle women, that I had ever met; but
it was more than that, it was admirably characteristic.
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