s nothing of the kind had
ever struck me before.

"Harder intellects than mine might have attributed the extraordinary
impression produced on me to the disordered condition of my mind at that
time; to the weariness of my own base pleasures which had been gaining
on me for months past, to the undefined longing which that weariness
implied for newer interests and fresher hopes than any that had
possessed me yet. I attempted no such sober self-examination as this: I
believed in destiny then, I believe in destiny now. It was enough for
me to know--as I did know--that the first sense I had ever felt of
something better in my nature than my animal self was roused by that
girl's face looking at me from her picture as no woman's face had ever
looked at me yet. In those tender eyes--in the chance of making that
gentle creature my wife--I saw my destiny written. The portrait which
had come into my hands so strangely and so unexpectedly was the silent
messenger of happiness close at hand, sent to warn, to encourage, to
rouse me before it was too late. I put the miniature under my pillow at
night; I looked at it again the next morning. My conviction of the day
before remained as strong as ever; my superstition (if you please to
call it so) pointed out to me irresistibly the way on which I should go.
There was a ship in port which was to sail for England in a fortnight,
touching at Madeira. In that ship I took my passage."

Thus far the reader had advanced with no interruption to disturb him.
But at the last words the tones of another voice, low and broken,
mingled with his own.

"Was she a fair woman," asked the voice, "or dark, like me?"

Mr. Neal paused, and looked up. The doctor was still at the bed head,
with his fingers mechanically on the patient's pulse. The child, missing
his midday sleep, was beginning to play languidly with his new toy. The
father's eyes were watching him with a rapt and ceaseless attention. But
one great change was visible in the listeners since the narrative had
begun. Mrs. Armadale had dropped her hold of her husband's hand, and sat
with her face steadily turned away from him The hot African blood burned
red in her dusky cheeks as she obstinately repeated the question: "Was
she a fair woman, or dark, like me?"

"Fair," said her husband, without looking at her.

Her hands, lying clasped together in her lap, wrung each other hard--she
said no more. Mr. Neal's overhanging eyebrows lowered ominousl