"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 practised 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;