s is a
view of the Knoll, and the dam--and here is another of the mill, and
the water-fall--all beautifully done, and in water-colours, too. What
is this?--Have you been attempting a sketch of yourself!--The glass
must have been closely consulted, my fair coquette, to enable you to do
this!"

The blood had rushed into Maud's face, covering it with a rich tell-
tale mantle, when her companion first alluded to the half-finished
miniature he held in his hand; then her features resembled ivory, as
the revulsion of feeling, that overcame her confusion, followed. For
some little time she sate, in breathless stillness, with her looks cast
upon the floor, conscious that Robert Willoughby was glancing from her
own face to the miniature, and from the miniature to her face again,
making his observations and comparisons. Then she ventured to raise her
eyes timidly towards his, half-imploringly, as if to beseech him to
proceed to something else. But the young man was too much engrossed
with the exceedingly pretty sketch he held in his hand, to understand
her meaning, or to comply with her wishes.

"This is yourself, Maud!" he cried--"though in a strange sort of
dress--why have you spoilt so beautiful a thing, by putting it in this
masquerade?"

"It is not myself--it is a copy of--a miniature I possess."

"A miniature you possess!--Of whom can you possess so lovely a
miniature, and I never see it?"

A faint smile illumined the countenance of Maud, and the blood began to
return to her cheeks. She stretched her hand over to the sketch, and
gazed on it, with intense feeling, until the tears began to stream from
her eyes.

"Maud--dear, _dearest_ Maud--have I said that which pains you?--I
do not understand all this, but I confess there are secrets to which I
can have no claim to be admitted--"

"Nay, Bob, this is making too much of what, after all, must sooner or
later be spoken of openly among us. I believe that to be a copy of a
miniature of my mother."

"Of mother, Maud--you are beside yourself--it has neither her features,
expression, nor the colour of her eyes. It is the picture of a far
handsomer woman, though mother is still pretty; and it is perfection!"

"I mean of _my_ mother--of Maud Yeardley; the wife of my father,
Major Meredith."

This was said with a steadiness that surprised our heroine herself,
when she came to think over all that had passed, and it brought the
blood to her companion's heart, in a torrent.