Imprudent Lady Read Online Free PDF

You've seen those pitiful broken bits and pieces Elgin had carted home. A scandal. The man is senile, not a doubt of it. No, when I say art I refer to painting."
    “Ah, yes, painting. Well, I spent some time in Italy. Rome is worth seeing, and Florence of course..."
    No mere tourist was to take the floor. “I daresay you are familiar with the Mona Lisa?"
    “Yes,” Dammler answered, slow to give up hope, and thinking still to hear some esoteric bit of history or lore connected with the famous painting.
    “It's by da Vinci,” Clarence told him in a knowing way.
    Dammler's smile reappeared, accompanied now by a wicked twinkle in his one visible eye. “So I hear,” he agreed in an encouraging tone.
    “I believe our guests are in a hurry, Uncle,” Prudence mentioned.
    “Not at all,” Dammler contradicted.
    “Hurry? Nonsense, we are discussing art. Ah, here is the wine. How pleasant it is to sit chatting with cultured gentlemen who are interested in something other than politics and the price of corn."
    “You were saying something about the Mona Lisa," his guest reminded him. Murray frowned an apology at Prudence, and accepted a glass of wine.
    “Yes, so I was. It is a wonderful painting, the Mona Lisa. La Gioconda the dagos call it.” Miss Mallow's heart sank to her shoes, but there was to be no escape. “Clever the way da Vinci set up the model so he wouldn't have to paint her ‘head-on.’ That is the most difficult pose to paint because of fore-shortening. The whole thing has to be foreshortened from that angle—dashed tricky business. And he cut her off just below the waist, too, to eliminate the problem of proportion. When you get into a full length portrait you have proportion to contend with. He avoided all that by posing her cleverly and cutting her off at the waist. I sometimes use that pose myself when I am in a hurry."
    “You do some painting yourself, do you, Mr. Elmtree?” Dammler asked with a show of interest.
    “I dabble a little. Not professional, you know, but the way you dabble in rhyming. Just for my own enjoyment."
    “Just so,” the premier poet of England agreed.
    “Yes, I did a likeness of my niece a while ago. Something on the lines of the Mona Lisa. But I gave Prudence an eyelash, of course...” He rambled on with his stunt of using a symbol, and Lawrence's jealousy of him, the incredible speed of eighty-seven portraits a year. Each of his follies was dragged out before Murray finally pulled Dammler away, protesting that the visit was too short.
    “A man like that is better than a week at a spa,” Dammler said as they walked to the carriage. “I had some fear the English eccentric was a dead species, but I am happy to see he is alive and well and living in Grosvenor Square."
    Back in the house, Clarence turned to his niece and said, “Well, well, he seemed a pretty nice fellow, your new beau."
    “He is not a beau, Uncle,” Prudence replied, defeat in every line of her body.
    “Ho, you are a sly puss. Nabbing a marquis under our very noses. Not a beau, indeed. Wait till I tell Mrs. Hering and Sir Alfred."
    “I wish you would not..."
    “Nonsense, I am not ashamed to know him. He is a capital fellow. Knows all about art. I shall drop him a note and ask him if he would like to pose for me."
    “Oh, Uncle, indeed you must not!"
    “I can slip him in between the Purdy twins and Mrs. Mulgrove—a week Monday I can start. Monday to Wednesday—three days. He will be no work at all. It will take very little fixing up to make him look well on canvas. He has a fine eyelash—pity about the patch, but I will paint that out, of course."
    Mr. Elmtree could not understand why his niece went into a fit of desperate giggles, but charitably assumed it was due to her great luck in nabbing Lord Dammler for a beau. He was dismayed he had forgotten to get the fellow's address to drop him a line for his appointment. Prudence did not mention the efficacy of Mr. Murray as an intermediary, and the