is wife's face and
recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at
the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand
that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana
soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her
cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray
the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time,
voluntarily took up the subject.

"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a
smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
odious hand?"

"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added, in
a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had
taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."

"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it
out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
that dream."

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation
for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat in
his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to
the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an
unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
no