"Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid, the longer I look. It is
certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress,--the
features,--all are the same; and yet something is altered."

"Is then the picture less like than it was yesterday?" inquired the
painter, now drawing near, with irrepressible interest.

"The features are perfect, Elinor," answered Walter, "and, at the first
glance, the expression seemed also hers. But, I could fancy that the
portrait has changed countenance, while I have been looking at it. The
eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression. Nay,
it is grief and terror! Is this like Elinor?"

"Compare the living face with the pictured one," said the painter.

Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and
absorbed--fascinated as it were--in contemplation of Walter's portrait,
Elinor's face had assumed precisely the expression of which be had just
been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before a mirror, she
could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the picture itself
been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her present aspect, with
stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared quite unconscious of
the dialogue between the artist and her lover.

"Elinor," exclaimed Walter, in amazement, "what change has come over
you?"

She did not hear him, nor desist from her fixed gaze, till he seized her
hand, and thus attracted her notice; then, with a sudden tremor, she
looked from the picture to the face of the original.