et there was evidence unmistakable, conclusive: the
son of her despoiler loved the daughter of her rival; and--if the virgin
heart speaks by the outward sign--those downcast eyes, those blushing
cheeks, that heaving breast, told that he did not love in vain!

Before her lurid and murderous gaze, as if to defy her, the two
inheritors of a revenge unglutted by the grave stood, united
mysteriously together. Up, from the vast ocean of her hate, rose that
poor isle of love; there, unconscious of the horror around them, the
victims found their footing! How beautiful at that hour their youth;
their very ignorance of their own emotions; their innocent gladness;
their sweet trouble! The fell gazer drew a long breath of fiendlike
complacency and glee, and her hands opened wide, and then slowly closed,
as if she felt them in her grasp.

CHAPTER IX. THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS.

And from that day Percival had his privileged entry into Madame
Dalibard's house. The little narrative of the circumstances connected
with his first meeting with Helen, partly drawn from Percival, partly
afterwards from Helen (with blushing and faltered excuses from the
latter for not having mentioned before an incident that might, perhaps
needlessly, vex or alarm her aunt in so delicate a state of health), was
received by Lucretia with rare graciousness. The connection, not only
between herself and Percival, but between Percival and Helen, was
allowed and even dwelt upon by Madame Dalibard as a natural reason for
permitting the artless intimacy which immediately sprang up between
these young persons. She permitted Percival to call daily, to remain for
hours, to share in their simple meals, to wander alone with Helen in the
garden, assist her to bind up the ragged flowers, and sit by her in the
old ivy-grown arbour when their work was done. She affected to look upon
them both as children, and to leave to them that happy familiarity which
childhood only sanctions, and compared to which the affection of maturer
years seems at once coarse and cold.

As they grew more familiar, the differences and similarities in their
characters came out, and nothing more delightful than the harmony into
which even the contrasts blended ever invited the guardian angel to
pause and smile. As flowers in some trained parterre relieve each other,
now softening, now heightening, each several hue, till all unite in one
concord of interwoven beauty, so these two blooming natur