was stronger too.

A footstep in the hall arrested her attention, and she stood
palpitating, with her hand upon her heart. It passed, leaving only
silence; but it had been a useful warning to her. Suppose, in her
present mood, Horace should make his way to her sitting-room and
knock for admittance. Would she--could she--send him away, with her
heart crying out for the relief of speech and confession to him as
it was doing now?

With a hurried impulse she caught up a light wrap of dense black
material, and passed rapidly into the hall. Her impulse was to go out
of doors, to get away from the house until he should have left it;
but in order to do this from her apartments, she must pass by the
library, and this she feared to do. So she changed her purpose, and
stepping softly that no one might hear her, she entered the long
picture-gallery, and closed the door behind her with great care to
make no noise. Many of the blinds were closed, but down at the far
end where her picture hung there was some light, and with an
impulsive desire to look at this picture, with a view to the
impression that it might make on Horace when he should see it, she
glided noiselessly down the room toward it.

The full-length portraits to right and left of her loomed vaguely
through the half-light. She glanced at each one as she passed slowly
along, with the feeling that she was taking leave of them forever. In
this way her gaze had been diverted from the direction of her own
portrait, and she was within a few yards of it when, looking straight
ahead of her, she saw between the picture and herself the figure of a
man.

He stood as still as any canvas on the wall, and gazed upward to the
face before him. Bettina, as startled as if she had seen a ghost in
this dim-lighted room, stood equally still behind him, her hand over
her parted lips, as if to stifle back the cry that rose.

And still he stood and gazed and gazed, while she, as if petrified,
stood there behind him, for moments that seemed to her endless.

Presently she saw his shoulders raised by the inhalation of a
deep-drawn breath, which escaped him in an audible sigh. The sound
recalled her. Turning with a wild instinct of escape, she fled down
the long room, her black cape streaming behind her, and vanished in
the shadows out of which she had emerged.

Somehow, she never knew how, she let herself out into the hall, and
thence she sped through the long corridor, down the stairs, pa