ing how brutally he had behaved, and sank
into gloominess. Not very long after, he took Narramore to walk in the
same direction; they came again to the little shop, and Hilliard
surprised his companion with a triumphant shout. The window was now
laid out in a much more promising way, with goods of modest value. "You
remember?" said the young man. "I couldn't rest till I had sent her
something. She'll wonder to the end of her life who the money came
from. But she's made use of it, poor creature, and it'll bring her
luck."

Only the hopeless suppression of natural desires, the conflict through
years of ardent youth with sordid circumstances, could have brought him
to the pass he had now reached--one of desperation centred in self.
Every suggestion of native suavity and prudence was swept away in
tumultuous revolt. Another twelvemonth of his slavery and he would have
yielded to brutalising influences which rarely relax their hold upon a
man. To-day he was prompted by the instinct of flight from peril
threatening all that was worthy in him.

Just as the last glimmer of daylight vanished from his room there
sounded a knock at the door.

"Your tea's ready, Mr. Hilliard," called a woman's voice.

He took his meals downstairs in the landlady's parlour. Appetite at
present lie had none, but the pretence of eating was a way of passing
the time; so he descended and sat down at the prepared table.

His wandering eyes fell on one of the ornaments of the room--Mrs.
Brewer's album. On first coming to live in the house, two years ago, he
had examined this collection of domestic portraits, and subsequently,
from time to time, had taken up the album to look at one photograph
which interested him. Among an assemblage of types excelling in
ugliness of feature and hideousness of costume--types of toil-worn age,
of ungainly middle life, and of youth lacking every grace, such as are
exhibited in the albums of the poor--there was discoverable one female
portrait in which, the longer he gazed at it, Hilliard found an
ever-increasing suggestiveness of those qualities he desired in woman.
Unclasping the volume, he opened immediately at this familiar face. A
month or two had elapsed since he last regarded it, and the countenance
took possession of him with the same force as ever.

It was that of a young woman probably past her twentieth year. Unlike
her neighbours in the album, she had not bedizened herself before
sitting to be portrayed. T