Sophie was silent. He had now taken a seat by her side on the settle under the window. Sophie’s eyes were riveted abstractedly on the opposite wall, papered with the martyrdom of St. Petronella and the four noble Roman ladies who suffered with her; the scene represented the martyrdom at the moment when life was offered the young saint as she stood upon the scaffold, on condition of her recantation. She stood in the centre of the scaffold arrayed in a scant white tunic, her white and slender limbs exposed, her hands clasped upon her bosom, and her fine blue eyes raised to heaven, her golden locks rolling to her waist; behind her, leaning on his axe, whose end rested on the block, stood the executioner; on her left hand stood the group of imperial officers, with their offer of mercy; on her right knelt her aged father with his grey locks streaming on the wind, his face upturned to hers in the anguish of supplication, holding towards her a babe of a few days old—_her_ babe, of which she had been delivered in prison—appealing to her by the venerableness of his own grey hairs, the innocence of its infancy, and the helplessness of both, to avoid death, to recant her faith, and to live for them; but the eyes of the saint never fell from their high glance, the look alike above the terror, the bribe, and the love below her. “Well, Miss Churchill, when you have contemplated that saint, which the painter has martyred worse than the Pagans, to your heart’s content, you will give me an answer, perhaps, or is it so familiar that you never see it?” “It is very familiar, sir, but it never wearies me; and now that you remind me of it, I sometimes, when I have nothing to do in the house, and when the weather is too inclement for me to go out, reproduce these scenes with a pencil and paper, and sometimes,” said she, blushing deeply, “illustrate them with pen and ink.” “You draw, and write poetry; will you permit me to see some of your productions?” “I try, but fail in both, sir; and if you will pardon me, I would prefer not to expose my folly further.” The pastor urged his point in vain, Sophie gently but firmly resisted. But at this moment old Cumbo, who had hobbled out of the room, hobbled back, and before Sophie suspected her purpose, thrust into the pastor’s hands a dilapidated old portfolio, grumbling out, “I telled her so—wouldn’t b’lieve ole nigger, how de church would be down on top ob her for make de image ob ebery ting in heaben above, in de earf beneaf, an’ de waters under de earf. I telled her how ’twould be.”