But in those years, “long enough ago,” to which I refer,—­somewhere between Lea and Blackheath, stood in the midst of well-kept grounds a goodly mansion, which held this pleasant room.  It was always light and cheerful and warm, for the three windows down to the broad gravel-walk before it faced south; and though the lawn was darkened just in front of them by two magnificent yew-trees, the atmosphere of the room itself, in its silent, sunny loftiness, was at once gay and solemn to my small imagination and senses,—­much as the interior of Saint Peter’s of Rome has been since to them.  Wonderful, large, tall jars of precious old china stood in each window, and my nose was just on a level with the wide necks, whence issued the mellowest smell of fragrant pot-pourri.  Into this room, with its great crimson curtains and deep crimson carpet, in which my feet seemed to me buried, as in woodland moss, I used to be brought for recompense of having been “very good,” and there I used to find a lovely-looking lady, who was to me the fitting divinity of this shrine of pleasant awfulness.  She bore a sweet Italian diminutive for her Christian name, added to one of the noblest old ducal names of Venice, which was that of her family.

I have since known that she was attached to the person of, and warmly personally attached to, the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales,—­then only unfortunate; so that I can now guess at the drift of much sad and passionate talk with indignant lips and tearful eyes, of which the meaning was then of course incomprehensible to me, but which I can now partly interpret by the subsequent history of that ill-used and ill-conducted lady.

The face of my friend with the great Venetian name was like one of Giorgione’s pictures,—­of that soft and mellow colorlessness that recalls the poet’s line,—­

  “E smarrisce ’l bel volto in quel colore
  Che non e pallidezza, ma candore,”—­

or the Englishman’s version of the same thought,—­

  “Her face,—­oh, call it fair, not pale!”

It seemed to me, as I remember it, cream-colored; and her eyes, like clear water over brown rocks, where the sun is shining.  But though the fair visage was like one of the great Venetian master’s portraits, her voice was purely English, low, distinct, full, and soft,—­and in this enchanting voice she used to tell me the story of the one large picture which adorned the room.

Over and over again, at my importunate beseeching, she told it,—­sometimes standing before it, while I held her hand and listened with upturned face, and eyes rounding with big tears of wonder and pity, to a tale which shook my small soul with a sadness and strangeness far surpassing the interest of my beloved tragedy, “The Babes in the Wood,”—­though at this period of my existence it has happened to me to interrupt with frantic cries of distress, and utterly refuse to hear, the end of that lamentable ballad.