not yet ten o'clock. To gratify her passionate curiosity she now made
her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and putting
on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the table and
reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances. Then she fetched
the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the likeness,
and set it up before her.

It was a striking countenance to look upon. The poet wore a luxuriant
black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded the
forehead. The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an
unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped
brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the
confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what the
spectacle portended.

Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'And it's you
who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'

As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her eyes
filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips. Then she
laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.

She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three
children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable
manner. No, he was not a stranger! She knew his thoughts and feelings
as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughts
and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhaps
luckily for himself; considering that he had to provide for family
expenses.