cheek more flushed than usual, and tears in her eyes. I approached in
silence, and as I drew my chair to the table, my eye fell on a glove on
the floor. It was a man's glove. Do you know," said my father, "that
once, when I was very young, I saw a Dutch picture called 'The Glove,'
and the subject was of murder? There was a weed-grown, marshy pool, a
desolate, dismal landscape, that of itself inspired thoughts of ill
deeds and terror. And two men, as if walking by chance, came to this
pool; the finger of one pointed to a blood-stained glove, and the eyes
of both were fixed on each other, as if there were no need of words.
That glove told its tale. The picture had long haunted me in my
boyhood, but it never gave me so uneasy and fearful a feeling as did
that real glove upon the floor. Why? My dear Pisistratus, the theory
of forebodings involves one of those questions on which we may ask 'why'
forever. More chilled than I had been in speaking to her father, I took
heart at last, and spoke to Ellinor."

My father stopped short; the moon had risen, and was shining full into
the room and on his face. And by that light the face was changed; young
emotions had brought back youth,--my father looked a young man. But
what pain was there! If the memory alone could raise what, after all,
was but the ghost of suffering, what had been its living reality!
Involuntarily I seized his hand; my father pressed it convulsively, and
said with a deep breath: "It was too late; Trevanion was Lady Ellinor's
accepted, plighted, happy lover. My dear Katherine, I do not envy him
now; look up, sweet wife, look up!"

(1). The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests; the hieroglyph
generally known to the well educated.

(2). Lucian, The Dream of Micyllus.