At the end of my next sitting, when my mother and myself had risen to take leave of him, he said, “No, don’t go yet,—­stay a moment,—­I want to show you something—­if I can;” and he moved restlessly about, taking up and putting down his chalks and pencils, and standing, and sitting down again, as if unable to make up his mind to do what he wished.  At length he went abruptly to an easel, and, removing from it a canvas with a few slight sketches on it, he discovered behind it the profile portrait of a lady in a white dress folded simply across her bosom, and showing her beautiful neck and shoulders.  Her head was dressed with a sort of sibylline turban, and she supported it upon a most lovely hand and arm, her elbow resting on a large book, toward which she bent, and on the pages of which her eyes were fixed, the exquisite eyelid and lashes hiding the eyes.  “Oh, how beautiful! oh, who is it!” exclaimed I.  “A—­a lady,” stammered Lawrence, turning white and red, “toward whom—­for whom—­I entertained the profoundest regard.”  Thereupon he fled out of the room.  “It is the portrait of Mrs. W——­,” said my mother; “she is now dead; she was an exceedingly beautiful and accomplished woman, the authoress of the words and music of the song Sir Thomas Lawrence asked you to learn for him.”

The great painter’s devotion to this lovely person had been matter of notoriety in the London world.  Strangely enough, but a very short time ago I discovered that she was the kinswoman of my friend Miss Cobb’s mother, of whom Miss Cobb possessed a miniature, in which the fashion of dress and style of head-dress were the same as those in the picture I saw, and in which I also traced some resemblance to the beautiful face which made so great an impression on me.  Not long after this Mrs. Siddons, dining with us one day, asked my mother how the sketch Lawrence was making of me was getting on.  After my mother’s reply, my aunt remained silent for some time, and then, laying her hand on my father’s arm, said, “Charles, when I die, I wish to be carried to my grave by you and Lawrence.”  Lawrence reached his grave while she was yet tottering on the brink of hers.

After my next sitting, my mother, thinking he might be gratified by my aunt’s feeling toward him, mentioned her having dined with us.  He asked eagerly of her health, her looks, her words, and my mother telling him of her speech about him, he threw down his pencil, clasped his hands, and, with his eyes full of tears and his face convulsed, exclaimed, “Good God! did she say that?”

When my likeness was finished, Lawrence showed it to my mother, who, though she had attended all my sittings, had never seen it till it was completed.  As she stood silently looking at it, he said, “What strikes you? what do you think?” “It is very like Maria,” said my mother, almost involuntarily, I am sure, for immediately this strange man fell into one of these paroxysms of emotion, and became so agitated as scarcely to be able to speak; and at last, with a violent effort, said, “Oh, she is very like her; she is very like them all!”