ts gates.

The chair in which Hilda sat was near the portrait of Beatrice Cenci,
which had not yet been taken from the easel. It is a peculiarity of
this picture, that its profoundest expression eludes a straightforward
glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or when the eye
falls casually upon it; even as if the painted face had a life and
consciousness of its own, and, resolving not to betray its secret of
grief or guilt, permitted the true tokens to come forth only when it
imagined itself unseen. No other such magical effect has ever been
wrought by pencil.

Now, opposite the easel hung a looking-glass, in which Beatrice's face
and Hilda's were both reflected. In one of her weary, nerveless changes
of position, Hilda happened to throw her eyes on the glass, and took in
both these images at one unpremeditated glance. She fancied--nor was it
without horror--that Beatrice's expression, seen aside and vanishing in
a moment, had been depicted in her own face likewise, and flitted from
it as timorously.

"Am I, too, stained with guilt?" thought the poor girl, hiding her face
in her hands.

Not so, thank Heaven! But, as regards Beatrice's picture, the incident
suggests a theory which may account for its unutterable grief and
mysterious shadow of guilt, without detracting from the purity which we
love to attribute to that ill-fated girl. Who, indeed, can look at that
mouth,--with its lips half apart, as innocent as a babe's that has
been crying, and not pronounce Beatrice sinless? It was the intimate
consciousness of her father's sin that threw its shadow over her, and
frightened her into a remote and inaccessible region, where no sympathy
could come. It was the knowledge of Miriam's guilt that lent the same
expression to Hilda's face.

But Hilda nervously moved her chair, so that the images in the glass
should be no longer Visible. She now watched a speck of sunshine that
came through a shuttered window, and crept from object to object,
indicating each with a touch of its bright finger, and then letting them
all vanish successively. In like manner her mind, so like sunlight
in its natural cheerfulness, went from thought to thought, but found
nothing that it could dwell upon for comfort. Never before had this
young, energetic, active spirit known what it is to be despondent. It
was the unreality of the world that made her so. Her dearest friend,
whose heart seemed the most solid and richest of Hilda's possessi