Miss Angel Author:Anne Thackeray Ritchie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. GONDOLAS. How light it moves, how softly, ah 1 Could life as does our gondola. Unvexed with quarrels, aims, and cares, And moral duties... more » and affairs, Unswaying, noiseless, swift, and strong, For ever thus—thus glide along. Antonio saw Angelica walk away with the splendid stranger, and as she did so he jealously felt as if all was over between them. Old Kauffmann was surely demented to let her go—was this the way he guarded his treasure? Would Antonio have let her go in company with those worldly people who take artists up to suit the fancy of the moment—who throw them by remorselessly and pass on when their fancy is over, leaving them perhaps wounded, mortified, humiliated? Ah! no, no; he would have guarded and shielded her from all the world, if it had been in his power. They all lived together in the same house, one of the smallest on the Grand Canal—a narrow shabby little tenement enough, with a view of palaces all about, and itself more splendid to Antonio than any marble magnificence. The narrow casement gave her light and sunshine, as morning after morning broke. The low roof sheltered her evening after evening. Then Antonio would come down from his top attic in the roof and spend the peaceful hours with the oldpainter and his docile pupil. Only last night they had been sitting together. How happy they were. They had a lamp, and Angel had her drawing-board and Antonio had brought down his engraving-work. He used to design altar-pieces and patterns for printers, and architectural designs for the convent of the Armenians, and ornaments for walls. He had painted the ceiling of the little sitting-room with lovely arabesques, garlands, and fountains, underneath which Angel's brown head bent busily over her evening's toil. There she sat in h...« less