While thus dwelling on the future, her eye did not even turn from those
sunlit towers to the forms below, and more immediately inviting its
survey. On the very spot where, at the opening of this tale, sat Sir
Miles St. John sharing his attention between his dogs and his guest, sat
now Helen Mainwaring; against the balustrade where had lounged Charles
Vernon, leaned Percival St. John; and in the same place where he had
stationed himself that eventful evening, to distort, in his malignant
sketch, the features of his father, Gabriel Varney, with almost the same
smile of irony upon his lips, was engaged in transferring to his canvas a
more faithful likeness of the heir's intended bride. Helen's
countenance, indeed, exhibited comparatively but little of the ravages
which the pernicious aliment, administered so noiselessly, made upon the
frame. The girl's eye, it is true, had sunk, and there was a languid
heaviness in its look; but the contour of the cheek was so naturally
rounded, and the features so delicately fine, that the fall of the
muscles was less evident; and the bright, warm hue of the complexion, and
the pearly sparkle of the teeth, still gave a fallacious freshness to the
aspect. But as yet the poisoners had forborne those ingredients which
invade the springs of life, resorting only to such as undermine the
health and prepare the way to unsuspected graves. Out of the infernal
variety of the materials at their command, they had selected a mixture
which works by sustaining perpetual fever; which gives little pain,
little suffering, beyond that of lassitude and thirst; which wastes like
consumption, and yet puzzles the physician, by betraying few or none of
its ordinary symptoms. But the disorder as yet was not incurable,--its
progress would gradually cease with the discontinuance of the venom.

Although October was far advanced, the day was as mild and warm as
August. But Percival, who had been watching Helen's countenance with the
anxiety of love and fear, now proposed that the sitting should be