humored
every caprice that attacked my brain. I had never before been his
guest, and here, at his house, on the second day of my sojourn, I
met his favorite nephew, Maurice Carlyle."

Mrs. Gerome uttered the name through firmly set teeth, and the blue
cords on her forehead tangled terribly.

Clenching her fingers, she drew a long breath, and continued,--

"At that time, he was by far the most fascinating, and certainly the
handsomest man I have ever met, and when I recall the beauty of his
face, the grace of his manner, the noble symmetry of his figure, and
the sparkling vivacity of his conversation, I do not wonder that from
the first hour of our acquaintance he charmed me. I was but a child, a
proud, impulsive young thing, full of romance, full of wild dreams of
manly chivalry and feminine constancy and devotion; and Maurice
Carlyle seemed the perfect incarnation of all my glowing ideals of
knightly excellence and heroism. He was thirty,--I not yet sixteen; he
poor and fastidious,--I generous and trusting, and possessed of one of
the largest estates on the continent. He had spent much of his life
abroad, and was as polished as any courtier who ever graced St. Cloud
or St. James; I an impetuous young simpleton, who knew nothing of the
world, save those tantalizing glimpses snatched from behind the bars
of a boarding-school. Here, examine these portraits, while the light
still lingers, and you will see the woful disparity that existed
between us at that period. They were painted a fortnight after I met
him."

She opened a velvet case, and laid before her companion two oval ivory
miniatures, richly set with large pearls.

Dr. Grey took them both in his hand, and, by the dull, lurid glow that
tipped a ridge of clouds lying along the western horizon, he saw two
pictures.

One, a remarkably handsome man, with brilliant black eyes and regular
features, and a cast of countenance that forcibly reminded him of the
likenesses of Edgar A. Poe, while the expression denoted more of
chicane than chivalry in his character. The other, a fresh, sweet,
girlish face, eloquent with innocence and purity, with clear, gray
eyes, overhung by jetty lashes, and overarched by black brows, while a
mass of dark hair was heaped in short curls on her forehead and
temples, and fell in long ringlets over her neck.

Dr. Grey looked at Mrs. Gerome, and now at the portrait, but the
resemblance could nowhere be traced, save in the delicate yet h