tell you he has fled, by this time, beyond your reach. I
say no more. It is enough that he is in safety; before a word of mine
puts him in danger, I'll perish by your hands, or any hands."

"Then shall you perish, fool!" cried the ruffian; and his hand, hurried
by the ferocious impulse of his rage, was again uplifted, when, in her
struggles at freedom, a new object met his sight in the chain and
portrait which Ralph had flung about her neck, and which, now falling
from her bosom, arrested his attention, and seemed to awaken some
recognition in his mind. His hold relaxed upon her arm, and with eager
haste he seized the portrait, tearing it away with a single wrench from
the rich chain to which it was appended, and which now in broken
fragments was strewed upon the floor.

Lucy sprang towards him convulsively, and vainly endeavored at its
recovery. Rivers broke the spring, and his eyes gazed with serpent-like
fixedness upon the exquisitely beautiful features which it developed.
His whole appearance underwent a change. The sternness had departed from
his face which now put on an air of abstraction and wandering, not
usually a habit with it. He gazed long and fixedly upon the portrait,
unheeding the efforts of the girl to obtain it, and muttering at
frequent intervals detached sentences, having little dependence upon one
another:--

"Ay--it is she," he exclaimed--"true to the life--bright, beautiful,
young, innocent--and I--But let me not think!"--

Then turning to the maid--

"Fond fool--see you the object of adoration with him whom you so
unprofitably adore. He loves _her_, girl--she, whom I--but why should I
tell it you? is it not enough that we have both loved and loved in vain;
and, in my revenge, you too shall enjoy yours."

"I have nothing to revenge, Guy Rivers--nothing for you, above all
others, to revenge. Give me the miniature; I have it in trust, and it
must not go out of my possession."

She clung to him as she spoke, fruitlessly endeavoring at the recovery
of that which he studiously kept from her reach. He parried her efforts
for a while with something of forbearance; but ere long his original
temper returned, and he exclaimed, with all the air of the demon:--

"Why will you tempt me, and why longer should I trifle? You cannot have
the picture--it belongs, or should belong, as well as its original, to
me. My concern is now with the robber from whom you obtained it. Will
you not say upon what route h