her, and his eyes fixed on the picture. The noble profile,
with its clear-cut features, showed much of the expression of the
face--an expression which was stern, yet sad and softened--that face
which, just before, had been before her eyes frowning, wrathful,
clothed with consuming terrors--a face upon which she could not look,
but which now was all mournful and sorrowful. And now, as she gazed,
the hard rigidity of her beautiful features relaxed, the sharp
glitter of her dark eyes died out, their stony lustre gave place to a
soft light, which beamed upon him with wonder, with timid awe--with
something which, in any other woman, would have looked like
tenderness. She had not been prepared for one like this. In her
former ideas of him he had been this boy of the portrait, with his
boyish enthusiasm, and his warm, innocent temperament. This idea she
had relinquished, and had known that he had changed during the years
into the heroic soldier and the calm judge. She had tried to
familiarize herself with this new idea, and had succeeded in doing so
to a certain extent. But, after all, the reality had been too much
for her. She had not been prepared for one like this, nor for such an
effect as the sight of him had produced. At this first interview he
had overpowered her utterly, and she had sat dumb and motionless
before him. All the sneering speeches which she had prepared in
anticipation of the meeting were useless. She found no place for
them. But there was one result to this interview which affected her
still more deeply than this discovery of his moral superiority. The
one great danger which she had always feared had passed away. She no
longer had that dread fear of discovery which hitherto had harassed
her; but in the place of this there suddenly arose another fear--a
fear which seemed as terrible as the other, which darkened over her
during the course of that scene till its close, and afterward--such
an evil as she never before could have thought herself capable of
dreading, yet one which she had brought upon herself.

What was that?

His contempt--his hate--his abhorrence--this was the thing which now
seemed so terrible to her.

For in the course of that interview a sudden change had come over all
her feelings. In spite of her later judgment about him, which she had
expressed to Gualtier, there had been in her mind a half contempt for
the man whom she had once judged of by his picture only, and whom she
recollected