d
retired, leaving her alone with her son, she refused to answer any of his
queries, and burying her face in her pillow, she wept with convulsive and
irrepressible violence. At length the very vehemence of her grief seemed,
by exhausting itself, to restore her to comparative calm: her tears ceased
to flow, her heavy sobs no longer shook her frame, and she remained for
some time perfectly quiet and silent. At length she spoke:

"Horace!"

"What is it, mother?"

"Describe to me the personal appearance of your brother's wife--minutely,
as though a picture were to be painted from your words."

It was no unusual request. Horace was in the habit of thus minutely
describing persons and places for his mother's benefit.

"She is rather below the middle height, and her form, though slender, is
finely moulded and of perfect proportions. Her hands and feet are
faultless, and her walk is extremely graceful, resembling more the gait of
a French-woman than that of an English girl. Her complexion is pale and
rather sallow, and her countenance is full of expression, which varies
constantly when she talks. The lower part of her face is somewhat too thin
for perfect beauty, and the chin is inclined to be pointed, and the cheeks
are rather hollow, but the upper part is superb. Her brow is low and
broad, and she folds back from it the heavy waves of her black hair in the
plainest possible style. Her eyes are her chief beauty, and would
transfigure any face into loveliness. They are very large, and of a dark,
transparent blue, of so lustrous and so perfect an azure that not even in
shadow do they look black. Stay--I can give you a better idea of her
appearance than by multiplying words. Did you, when you were in Munich,
visit the Gallery of Beauties in the Royal Palace?"

"I did."

"Do you remember the portrait of Lola Montez?"

"Certainly--as though I had seen it yesterday."

"Marion resembles that portrait very strikingly, particularly in the shape
and carriage of her head."

"I am not mistaken--it is she. Would that I had never lived to see this
day!" And Mrs. Rutherford wrung her hands in an agony of helpless,
hopeless distress.

"It is she?" repeated Horace, in perplexity. "Whom do you mean, mother?
Who was Marion Nugent?"

"She is not Marion Nugent--this impostor who has thrust herself into our
midst, bringing scandal and dishonor as her dower."

"And who, then, is she?"

Mrs. Rutherford turned toward him and fixed on