xtravagant and he the semblance--perhaps the
reality--of a madman. Reading other bosoms with an acuteness almost
preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of his own.

"And this should be the house," said he, looking up and down the front
before he knocked. "Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it
will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it
is framed within them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest
tints--the faces of the portraits, the figures and action of the
sketch!"

He knocked.

"The portraits--are they within?" inquired he of the domestic; then,
recollecting himself, "Your master and mistress--are they at home?"

"They are, sir," said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,
"and the portraits too."

The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door
with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was
empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes
were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured
representatives, who had long been the objects of so singular an
interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.

They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing
before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich
and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel
with one hand, while the other grasped that of his bride. The
pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished
splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across the room rather
than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been
almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had
successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of
time into a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made
it the very expression of the portrait. Walter's face was moody and
dull or animated only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness
for their momentary illumination. He looked from Elinor to her
portrait, and thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he
finally stood absorbed.

The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him
on its progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his
mind. Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied
itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil wh