against
the mantel, construed her hesitation into guilt, which dreaded to be
convicted.

"Why don't you take it?" persisted Mrs. Graham. "You defied me to
prove it, and here it is. I found it in my husband's private drawer,
together with one of those long curls, which last I burned out of my
sight."

Durward shuddered, while 'Lena involuntarily thought of the mass of
wavy tresses which they had told her clustered around her mother's
face, as she lay in her narrow coffin. Why thought she of her mother
then? Was it because they were so strangely alike, that any allusion
to her own personal appearance always reminded her of her lost
parent? Perhaps so. But to return to our story 'Lena would have
sworn that the likeness was not hers, and still an undefined dread
crept over her, preventing her from moving.

"You seem so unwilling to be convinced, allow me to assist you," said
Mrs. Graham, at the same time unclasping the case and holding to view
the picture, on which with wondering eyes, 'Lena gazed in
astonishment.

"It is I--it is; but oh, heaven, how came he by it?" she gasped, and
the next moment she fell fainting at Durward's feet.

In an instant he was bending over her, his mother exclaiming, "Pray,
don't touch her--she does it for effect."

But he knew better. He knew there was no feigning the corpse-like
pallor of that face, and pushing his mother aside, he took the
unconscious girl in his arms, and bearing her to the sofa, laid her
gently upon it, removing her hand and smoothing back from her cold
brow the thick, clustering curls which his mother had designated as
"coiling serpents."

"Do not ring and expose her to the idle gaze of servants," said he,
to his mother, who had seized the bell-rope. "Bring some water from
your bedroom, and we will take charge of her ourselves."

There was something commanding in the tones of his voice, and Mrs.
Graham, now really alarmed at the deathly appearance of 'Lena,
hastened to obey. When he was alone, Durward bent down, imprinting
upon the white lips a burning kiss--the first he had ever given her.
In his heart he believed her unworthy of his love, and yet she had
never seemed one-half so dear to him as at that moment, when she lay
there before him helpless as an infant, and all unmindful of the
caresses which he lavished upon her. "If it were indeed death;" he
thought, "and it had come upon her while yet she was innocent, I
could have borne it, but now I wo