"I thought you would tell me whatever it was best for me to know,"

replied Mabel, drying her eyes.

If she had said that she was too well-trained to assail him with

interrogatories he had not invited, it would have been nearer the

mark.

"There is nothing relating to her which I desire to conceal," he

rejoined, with some stiffness, "or she would never have become my

promised wife. She is a Miss Dorrance, the daughter of a widow

residing in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. I met her first

at Trenton Falls, where a happy accident brought me into association

with her party. I travelled with them to the Lakes and among the

White Mountains, and, while in Boston, visited her daily. We were

betrothed a week ago, and having, as I have observed, an aversion to

protracted engagements, I prevailed upon her to appoint the tenth of

next mouth as our marriage day. There you have the story in brief. I

have not Mrs. Sutton's talents as a raconteur, nor her disposition

to turn hearts inside out for the edification of her auditors."

"Does she--Miss Dorrance--look like anybody I know?" asked Mabel,

hesitating to declare herself dissatisfied with the skeleton

love-tale, yet uncertain how to learn more.

"A roundabout way of asking if she is passable in appearance,"

Winston said, with his smile of conscious superiority. "Judge for

yourself!" taking from his pocket a miniature.

"How beautiful! What a very handsome woman?" the sister exclaimed at

sight of the pictured face.

"You are correct. She is, moreover, a thorough lady, and

highly-educated. Ridgeley will have a queenly mistress. The likeness

is considered faithful, but it does not do her justice."

He took it from Mabel, and they scanned it together; she resting

against his shoulder. She felt his chest heave twice; heard him

swallow spasmodically in the suppression of some mighty emotion, and

the palpable effort drew her very near to him. She never doubted

from that moment, what she had more cause in after days to believe,

that he loved the woman he had won with a fervor of passion that

seemed foreign to his temperament as the evidence of it was to his

conduct.

The September sun was near the horizon, and between the bowed

shutters one slender, gilded arrow shot athwart the portrait,

producing a marvellous and sinister change in its expression. The

large, limpid eyes became shallow and cunning; the smile lurking

about the mouth was the more treacherous and deadly for its

sweetness; while the burnished coils of hair brushed away from the

temples had the opaline tints and sinuous roll of a serpent.




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