nd would dwell on the
past times of his house, on his family history, on himself and his own
feelings--subjects each and all invested with a peculiar zest, for they
were each and all unique. One glorious night in June, after I had been
taunting him about his ideal bride and asking him when she would
come and graft her foreign beauty on the old Hunsden oak, he answered
suddenly--

"You call her ideal; but see, here is her shadow; and there cannot be a
shadow without a substance."

He had led us from the depth of the "winding way" into a glade from
whence the beeches withdrew, leaving it open to the sky; an unclouded
moon poured her light into this glade, and Hunsden held out under her
beam an ivory miniature.

Frances, with eagerness, examined it first; then she gave it to
me--still, however, pushing her little face close to mine, and seeking
in my eyes what I thought of the portrait. I thought it represented a
very handsome and very individual-looking female face, with, as he had
once said, "straight and harmonious features." It was dark; the hair,
raven-black, swept not only from the brow, but from the temples--seemed
thrust away carelessly, as if such beauty dispensed with, nay,
despised arrangement. The Italian eye looked straight into you, and an
independent, determined eye it was; the mouth was as firm as fine; the
chin ditto. On the back of the miniature was gilded "Lucia."

"That is a real head," was my conclusion.

Hunsden smiled.

"I think so," he replied. "All was real in Lucia."

"And she was somebody you would have liked to marry--but could not?"

"I should certainly have liked to marry her, and that I HAVE not done so
is a proof that I COULD not."

He repossessed himself of the miniature, now again in Frances' hand, and
put it away.

"What do YOU think of it?" he asked of my wife, as he buttoned his coat
over it.

"I am sure Lucia once wore chains and broke them," was the strange
answer. "I do not mean matrimonial chains," she added, correcting
herself, as if she feared mis-interpretation, "but social chains of some
sort. The face is that of one who has made an effort, and a successful
and triumphant effort, to wrest some vigorous and valued faculty from
insupportable constraint; and when Lucia's faculty got free, I am
certain it spread wide pinions and carried her higher than--" she
hesitated.

"Than what?" demanded Hunsden.

"Than 'les convenances' permitted you to follow."

"I think y