that I would not tie myself to a period, and I guessed that she
wished both to secure me and to discourage me; to say severely,

"Do you dream that you can get off with less than six months?
Do you dream that even by the end of that time you will be

appreciably nearer your victory?" What was more in my mind
was that she had a fancy to play me the trick of making me

engage myself when in fact she had annihilated the papers.
There was a moment when my suspense on this point was so acute

that I all but broke out with the question, and what kept it back
was but a kind of instinctiverecoil (lest it should be a mistake),

from the last violence of self-exposure. She was such a subtle
old witch that one could never tell where one stood with her.

You may imagine whether it cleared up the puzzle when,
just after she had said she would think of my proposal and without

any formaltransition, she drew out of her pocket with an
embarrassed hand a small object wrapped in crumpled white paper.

She held it there a moment and then she asked, "Do you know
much about curiosities?"

"About curiosities?"
"About antiquities, the old gimcracks that people pay so much for today.

Do you know the kind of price they bring?"
I thought I saw what was coming, but I said ingenuously,

"Do you want to buy something?"
"No, I want to sell. What would an amateur give me for that?"

She unfolded the white paper and made a motion for me to take from
her a small oval portrait. I possessed myself of it with a hand

of which I could only hope that she did not perceive the tremor,
and she added, "I would part with it only for a good price."

At the first glance I recognized Jeffrey Aspern, and I was well
aware that I flushed with the act. As she was watching me

however I had the consistency to exclaim, "What a striking face!
Do tell me who it is."

"It's an old friend of mine, a very distinguished man in his day.
He gave it to me himself, but I'm afraid to mention his name, lest you

never should have heard of him, critic and historian as you are.
I know the world goes fast and one generation forgets another.

He was all the fashion when I was young."
She was perhaps amazed at my assurance, but I was surprised at hers; at her

having the energy, in her state of health and at her time of life, to wish
to sport with me that way simply for her private entertainment--the humor

to test me and practice on me. This, at least, was the interpretation that I
put upon her production of the portrait, for I could not believe that she

really desired to sell it or cared for any information I might give her.
What she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive

price on it. "The face comes back to me, it torments me," I said,
turning the object this way and that and looking at it very critically.

It was a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than the
ordinary miniature and representing a young man with a remarkably

handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and a buff waistcoat.
I judged the picture to have a valuable quality of resemblance and to have

been painted when the model was about twenty-five years old. There are,
as all the world knows, three other portraits of the poet in existence,

but none of them is of so early a date as this elegant production.
"I have never seen the original but I have seen other likenesses," I went on.

"You expressed doubt of this generation having heard of the gentleman,
but he strikes me for all the world as a celebrity. Now who is he?

I can't put my finger on him--I can't give him a label. Wasn't he a writer?
Surely he's a poet." I was determined that it should be she, not I,

who should first pronounce Jeffrey Aspern's name.
My resolution was taken in ignorance of Miss Bordereau's

extremely resolutecharacter, and her lips never formed
in my hearing the syllables that meant so much for her.

She neglected to answer my question but raised her hand to take
back the picture, with a gesture which though ineffectual

was in a high degree peremptory. "It's only a person
who should know for himself that would give me my price,"

she said with a certain dryness.
"Oh, then, you have a price?" I did not restore the precious thing;

not from any vindictive purpose but because I instinctively clung to it.
We looked at each other hard while I retained it.

"I know the least I would take. What it occurred to me to ask you
about is the most I shall be able to get."

She made a movement, drawing herself together as if,
in a spasm of dread at having lost her treasure, she were going

to attempt the immense effort of rising to snatch it from me.
I instantly placed it in her hand again, saying as I did so,

"I should like to have it myself, but with your ideas I could
never afford it."

She turned the small oval plate over in her lap, with its face down,
and I thought I saw her catch her breath a little, as if she had

had a strain or an escape. This however did not prevent her saying
in a moment, "You would buy a likeness of a person you don't know,

by an artist who has no reputation?"
"The artist may have no reputation, but that thing is wonderfully

well painted," I replied, to give myself a reason.
"It's lucky you thought of saying that, because the painter

was my father."
"That makes the picture indeed precious!" I exclaimed, laughing; and I

may add that a part of my laughter came from my satisfaction in finding
that I had been right in my theory of Miss Bordereau's origin. Aspern had

of course met the young lady when he went to her father's studio as a sitter.
I observed to Miss Bordereau that if she would entrust me with her

property for twenty-four hours I should be happy to take advice upon it;
but she made no answer to this save to slip it in silence into her pocket.

This convinced me still more that she had no sincereintention of selling
it during her lifetime, though she may have desired to satisfy herself

as to the sum her niece, should she leave it to her, might expect
eventually to obtain for it. "Well, at any rate I hope you will not offer

it without giving me notice," I said as she remained irresponsive.
"Remember that I am a possible purchaser."

"I should want your money first!" she returned with unexpected rudeness;
and then, as if she bethought herself that I had just cause to complain

of such an insinuation and wished to turn the matter off, asked abruptly
what I talked about with her niece when I went out with her that way

in the evening.
"You speak as if we had set up the habit," I replied.

"Certainly I should be very glad if it were to become a habit.
But in that case I should feel a still greater scruple at

betraying a lady's confidence."
"Her confidence? Has she got confidence?"

"Here she is--she can tell you herself," I said; for Miss Tita
now appeared on the threshold of the old woman's parlor.

"Have you got confidence, Miss Tita? Your aunt wants very
much to know."

"Not in her, not in her!" the younger lady declared, shaking her
head with a dolefulness that was neither jocular not affected.

"I don't know what to do with her; she has fits of horrid imprudence.
She is so easily tired--and yet she has begun to roam--

to drag herself about the house." And she stood looking down
at her immemorialcompanion with a sort of helpless wonder,

as if all their years of familiarity had not made her perversities,
on occasion, any more easy to follow.

"I know what I'm about. I'm not losing my mind.
I daresay you would like to think so," said Miss Bordereau

with a cynical little sigh.
"I don't suppose you came out here yourself. Miss Tita must have had to lend

you a hand," I interposed with a pacifying intention.
"Oh, she insisted that we should push her; and when she insists!"

said Miss Tita in the same tone of apprehension; as if there were no
knowing what service that she disapproved of her aunt might force

her next to render.
"I have always got most things done I wanted, thank God!

The people I have lived with have humored me," the old
woman continued, speaking out of the gray ashes of her vanity.