shudder over, marking one
whole side as you assure me of neck, shoulder, and arm, things that in
woman are of such inestimable value, of almost more importance than the
divine face itself."

"Yes, but the other side is statuesque enough to satisfy the
requisitions of a sensuous sculptor," she rejoined, coldly; "you are
wrong, Claude, let us be just! Miriam is very well formed, to say no
more, and her skin is like a magnolia-leaf, where sun and wind have not
touched or tanned it; then those scars will turn white after a while
like the rest, and perhaps scarcely be visible."

"O Heavens! hideous white seams!" he exclaimed, passionately. "I have
seen such, like small-pox marks, only ten times more frightful and
indelible." In his impotent weakness he moaned aloud.

"Worse and worse! I will tell you frankly, had I known of _them_, the
engagement never would have been contracted--no, not though the
_inferno_ had opened beneath me as my only alternative--but honor binds
me now."

"You are fastidious truly, and your sense of honor supreme," she
sneered.

"Beauty there was not," he continued, without regarding her rejoinder,
"in any remarkable degree. I could have borne its absence with common
patience, but absolute disfigurement, deformity, such as you assure me
those burns have left behind them, is too dreadful! Had not Dr.
Pemberton bared her arm in bleeding, as he did, I should never have
known of it at all probably until too late. That one mark was
suggestive."

"You attach too much consequence to mere externals, Claude," said
Evelyn, coldly. "I trust such fastidious notions may be laid at rest
before your marriage, or poor Miriam, with her warm, affectionate, and
unsuspicious nature will be the sufferer. I pity her fate, sincerely."

"No, Evelyn, you wrong me there; I respect and esteem her far too much
ever to wound her feelings. Against this I shall carefully guard. My
bargain would be broken, otherwise. It is a clear case of barter and
sale, you see. One's honor is concerned in keeping such an obligation. I
shall never be ungrateful."

"You have European ideas, you tell me," she said, bitterly; "is this one
of them?"

"It is, and the least among them, perhaps; yet it is, nevertheless, hard
to overcome positive repulsion."

There was a pause now, during which I could count every throb of my
heart, and throat, and temples--my whole frame was transfigured into an
anvil, on which a thousand tiny hammers seem