The Demon Lover Read Online Free PDF

was excited to be in a household like ours.
    “My mother thought my painting was a waste of time,” she said.
    I guessed that her mother had not been easy to live with, although Clare never said so and always spoke of her with the utmost affection.
    There was about her an air of one who has escaped to freedom; and my father and I were particularly pleased to have her in our home.
    And then the commission came.
    It threw my father into a state bordering on panic, exultation, apprehension, excitement and uncertainty.
    It was the moment of decision for him. Here was one of the most important commissions of his life. Could he, in his present state, take it?
    As soon as we were alone in the studio he explained to me. He was holding a heavily embossed piece of paper.
    “This is from the steward of the Baron de Centeville. It’s in Normandy not so far from Paris. It’s a commission from the Baron although naturally it comes through his steward. Apparently he is to marry and he wants a miniature painted of himself for his fiancee, the Princesse de Crespigny. And when that is done, if the results are pleasing, I am to visit the lady and paint one of her, so that in accordance with the custom, miniatures can be exchanged between the happy pair. Kate, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. If he is pleased … if my miniatures are seen in such quarters … I could be painting the Empress Eugenic herself before long.” His eyes were glowing. For the moment he had forgotten his affliction. I watched him with a terrible pity and desolation in my heart as he remembered and the joy faded from his face. I had never seen him look so despairing.
    Then suddenly his expression changed.
    “We could do it, Kate,” he said.
    “You could do it.”
    I thought my heartbeats would suffocate me. It was what I had longed for: to be commissioned by some glittering personage . to travel beyond our little world . across a continent, to visit foreign Courts, to live among people who made history.
    Of all the Courts of Europe, the most glittering was that of France.
    The Court of our own Queen was sombre in comparison. She was still mourning the death of her Consort who had died of typhoid a few years previously. Since then the Queen had shut herself away and scarcely shown herself. The Prince of Wales seemed to live a very merry life but that was not the same thing. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Louis Bonaparte who had been brother of the great Napoleon who had almost succeeded in conquering the
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    world, had married the beautiful Eugenie Mariede Montijo, and between them they had made their Court the centre of Europe.
    How I longed to see it! But of course these invitations did not come for me. They were for my father. And when he said:
    “We could do it…” he had given me a glimmer of what was forming in his mind.
    I said quietly: “You will have to refuse.”
    “Yes,” he replied, but I could see that that was not the end of the matter.
    I went on: “You will have to let it be known now. This must decide you.”
    “You could do it, Kate.”
    “They would never accept a woman.”
    “No,” he agreed, ‘of course not. “
    He was looking at me intently. Then he said slowly: “I could accept this commission …”
    “Your eyes might fail you. That would be quite disastrous.”
    “You would be my eyes, Kate.”
    “Do you mean that I would go with you?”
    He nodded slowly.
    “I should be allowed to take you with me. I need a travelling companion. I am not as young as I was. You would be of use to me. They would think … perhaps to mix the paints … clean my brushes, my palettes … So they would think. And you would watch over me, Kate.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I could do that.”
    “I wish I could say to them: ” My daughter is a great painter. She will do your miniatures. ” But they would never accept it.”
    “The world is unfair to women,” I said angrily.
    “The world is unfair to all at times. No,