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 he went? Will you not guide me--and, remember well--there are some terrors greater to your mind than any threat of death. Declare, for the last time--what road he took." The maiden was still, and showed no sign of reply. Her eye wandered--her spirit was in prayer. She was alone with a ruffian, irresponsible and reckless, and she had many fears. "Will you not speak?" he cried--"then you must hear. Disclose the fact, Lucy--say, what is the road, or what the course you have directed for this youth's escape, or--mark me! I have you in my power--my fullest power--with nothing to restrain my passion or my power, and--" She struggled desperately to release herself from his grasp, but he renewed it with all his sinewy strength, enforcing, with a vicelike gripe, the consciousness, in her mind, of the futility of all her physical efforts. "Do you not hear!" he said. "Do you comprehend me." "Do your worst!" she cried. "Kill me! I defy your power and your malice!" "Ha! but do you defy my passions. Hark ye, if ye fear not death, there is something worse than death to so romantic a damsel, which shall teach ye fear. Obey me, girl--report the route taken by this fugitive, or by all that is black in hell or bright in heaven, I--"