relax their hold upon a man. To-day he was prompted by the instinct
of flight from peril threatening all that was worthy in him.

Just as the last glimmer of daylight vanished from his room there
sounded a knock at the door.

"Your tea's ready, Mr. Hilliard," called a woman's voice.

He took his meals downstairs in the landlady's parlour. Appetite at
present lie had none, but the pretence of eating was a way of
passing the time; so he descended and sat down at the prepared
table.

His wandering eyes fell on one of the ornaments of the room--Mrs.
Brewer's album. On first coming to live in the house, two years ago,
he had examined this collection of domestic portraits, and
subsequently, from time to time, had taken up the album to look at
one photograph which interested him. Among an assemblage of types
excelling in ugliness of feature and hideousness of costume--types
of toil-worn age, of ungainly middle life, and of youth lacking
every grace, such as are exhibited in the albums of the poor--
there was discoverable one female portrait in which, the longer he
gazed at it, Hilliard found an ever-increasing suggestiveness of
those qualities he desired in woman. Unclasping the volume, he
opened immediately at this familiar face. A month or two had elapsed
since he last regarded it, and the countenance took possession of
him with the same force as ever.

It was that of a young woman probably past her twentieth year.
Unlike her neighbours in the album, she had not bedizened herself