imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them,
busied himself at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his
visitors to form their own judgment as to his perfected labors. At
intervals, he sent a glance from beneath his deep eyebrows, watching
their countenances in profile, with his pencil suspended over the
sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of the other's
picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without
uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward--then back--viewing
Elinor's portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.

"Is there not a change?" said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone.
"Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid, the longer I look. It is
certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress--the
features--all are the same; and yet something is altered."

"Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?" inquired the
painter, now drawing near, with irrepressible interest.

"The features are perfect, Elinor," answered Walter, "and, at the first
glance, the expression seemed also hers. But, I could fancy that the
portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it. The
eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression.
Nay, it is grief and terror! Is this like Elinor?"

"Compare the living face with the pictured one," said the painter.

Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress and started. Motionless and
absorbed--fascinated as it were--in contemplation of Walter's portrait,
Elinor's face had assumed precisely the expression of which he had just
been complaining. Had she practiced for whole hours before a mirror,
she could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the picture
itself been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her present aspect,
with stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared quite
unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover.

"Elinor," exclaimed Walter, in amazement, "what change has come over
you?"

She did not hear him, nor desist from her fixed gaze, till he seized
her hand, and thus attracted her notice; then, with a sudden tremor,
she looked from the picture to the face of the original. "Do you see
no change in your portrait?" asked she.

"In mine?--None!" replied Walter, examining it. "But let me see! Yes;
there is a slight change--an improvement, I think, in the picture,
though none in the likeness. It has a livelier