ed against me, whether of the truth
or of some slanderous falsehood.

I have now been here nearly a fortnight, and, but for one disturbing
care, the haunting dread of discovery, I am comfortably settled in my new
home: Frederick has supplied me with all requisite furniture and painting
materials: Rachel has sold most of my clothes for me, in a distant town,
and procured me a wardrobe more suitable to my present position: I have a
second-hand piano, and a tolerably well-stocked bookcase in my parlour;
and my other room has assumed quite a professional, business-like
appearance already. I am working hard to repay my brother for all his
expenses on my account; not that there is the slightest necessity for
anything of the kind, but it pleases me to do so: I shall have so much
more pleasure in my labour, my earnings, my frugal fare, and household
economy, when I know that I am paying my way honestly, and that what
little I possess is legitimately all my own; and that no one suffers for
my folly--in a pecuniary way at least. I shall make him take the last
penny I owe him, if I can possibly effect it without offending him too
deeply. I have a few pictures already done, for I told Rachel to pack up
all I had; and she executed her commission but too well--for among the
rest, she put up a portrait of Mr. Huntingdon that I had painted in the
first year of my marriage. It struck me with dismay, at the moment, when
I took it from the box and beheld those eyes fixed upon me in their
mocking mirth, as if exulting still in his power to control my fate, and
deriding my efforts to escape.

How widely different had been my feelings in painting that portrait to
what they now were in looking upon it! How I had studied and toiled to
produce something, as I thought, worthy of the original! what mingled
pleasure and dissatisfaction I had had in the result of my
labours!--pleasure for the likeness I had caught; dissatisfaction,
because I had not made it handsome enough. Now, I see no beauty in
it--nothing pleasing in any part of its expression; and yet it is far
handsomer and far more agreeable--far less repulsive I should rather
say--than he is now: for these six years have wrought almost as great a
change upon himself as on my feelings regarding him. The frame, however,
is handsome enough; it will serve for another painting. The picture
itself I have not destroyed, as I had first intended; I have put it
aside; not, I think, from any