“Yes, I have just finished it for the coming exhibition; it has occupied me for some time, and no one has yet seen it, but I intended showing it to _you_; do you like it?” “Like it? I could look forever into those wonderful eyes, and upon that calm, noble forehead. Is it a portrait?” “_No!_” came from the artist’s false lips, “it is an ideal work.” How unworthy was he of the look of proud delight, of reverent worship written on the pure, girlish face upturned to his! How unworthy was he of the tears that quivered on the long, golden lashes—the tremulous tones of that low voice! Yet with a quickened pulse, he received the incense of her enthusiasm, for it was a delicious foretaste of the homage yet to be paid his name—a drop from the full beaker of fame for which he thirsted. “I could almost envy you,” said Emily, “the visions of loveliness that must have come to you ere you could have called into being so glorious a creation.” “It was from the recollection of much, very much of beauty that I wrought the work,” answered Edgar. “I called into it the choicest elements of grace I had ever known. Do you not recognize the mouth?” he added, turning to Emily with a peculiar smile. Unconscious as she was of her own charms, it was impossible not to recognize in the form and expression of those full, sweet lips, a likeness to her own. False Edgar! it seemed to Emily a most delicate tribute of admiring love, and it filled her heart with a strange delight, to know that she was remembered amid his visions of beauty, that she realized even in part his dreams of the ideal. She did not answer, it was not a time for words. The consciousness of Edgar’s interest in her, now more fully revealed than ever, came fraught with still thought to her spirit. And Edgar was silent, feeling for the first time sure that the affections of the young being beside him were his own; for it was but a part of the selfishness of his nature to refrain from declaring his passion in direct terms, until he could read in the face of the guileless Emily that it were a welcome avowal. For a few moments they stood gazing on the portrait, then Emily lifted her happy eyes for one moment to his face, and with a slight inclination of her head, passed from the room. Gladsome morning and tempestuous night are not in greater contrast than were the light foot-fall and joyous spirit of Emily, to the lingering step and heavy heart of her who had so short a time preceded her. Both had come from the contemplation of the same picture—and to one its memory was as a talisman of love and happiness, and to the other of anguish and despair. CHAPTER II.