uld judge," and she continued to gaze.

Blonde he was, certainly; hair thrown carelessly back from a brow
broad and white; eyes, light, but with an expression that puzzled the
gazer.

"Eyes,--what color?" she said, without taking her own off the picture.

"Blue; pale blue, but capable of _such_ varying expression."

"Just so," dryly; "they look mild and saintly here, but I think those
eyes are capable of another expression. I could fancy the brain behind
such eyes to be--"

"What?" eagerly.

"Cruel, crafty, treacherous."

"Oh, Madeline!"

"There, there; I didn't say that he,"--tapping the picture--"possessed
these qualities. His eyes are unusual ones; did you ever see his
mouth?"

"What a question--through all those whiskers? no; but he has beautiful
teeth."

"So have tigers. There, dear, take the picture; I am no fit judge,
perhaps. Remember, I once knew a man with the face of an angel, and
the heart of a fiend. Your friend is certainly handsome; let us hope
he is equally good."

"He is; I know it," asserted Claire.

Then she told her companion how she had met him at the house of a
friend; how he was very learned and scientific; very grave and
dignified; and very devoted to herself. And how, beyond these few
facts, she knew little if anything of her blonde hero, Edward Percy.

Madeline received this information in a grave silence, whose chill
affected Claire as well, and after a few moments, as if by mutual
consent, they arose and entered the house.

Olive Girard had been absent a week; gone on a journey, sacred to her
as any Meccan pilgrimage, a visit to the place of her husband's
imprisonment. Every year she made this journey, returning home in some
measure comforted; for she had seen her beloved.

She came back on this evening, as the two girls were mingling their
voices in gay bravura duets--by mutual consent they avoided all songs
of a pathetic order, for reasons which neither would have cared to
acknowledge.

The evening having passed away, Claire found herself in her chamber
gazing at her lover's pictured face and thinking how good, how noble,
it was, and what a little goose she had been to allow anything
Madeline had said to apply to him. A sudden thought occurred to her,
and going to Madeline's door, she tapped gently. The door opened, and
Claire, raising a warning finger, said:

"Madeline, I forgot to tell you that Olive knows nothing of Edward
Percy, and--I don't want to tell her just