is considered faithful, but it does not do her justice."

He took it from Mabel, and they scanned it together; she resting
against his shoulder. She felt his chest heave twice; heard him
swallow spasmodically in the suppression of some mighty emotion, and
the palpable effort drew her very near to him. She never doubted
from that moment, what she had more cause in after days to believe,
that he loved the woman he had won with a fervor of passion that
seemed foreign to his temperament as the evidence of it was to his
conduct.

The September sun was near the horizon, and between the bowed
shutters one slender, gilded arrow shot athwart the portrait,
producing a marvellous and sinister change in its expression. The
large, limpid eyes became shallow and cunning; the smile lurking
about the mouth was the more treacherous and deadly for its
sweetness; while the burnished coils of hair brushed away from the
temples had the opaline tints and sinuous roll of a serpent.

Mabel shrank back before the horror of the absurd imagination.

Winston raised the picture to his lips.

"My peerless one!"