The bare idea of making the proposed comparison was hateful to me. If
Helena and I had happened to meet at that moment, I should have turned
away from her by instinct--she would have disturbed my impressions of
Eunice.

The Minister signed to me to move a little nearer to him. "I must say
it," he whispered, "and I am afraid of her hearing me. Is there anything
in her face that reminds you of her miserable mother?"

I had hardly patience to answer the question: it was simply
preposterous. Her hair was by many shades darker than her mother's hair;
her eyes were of a different color. There was an exquisite tenderness
and sincerity in their expression--made additionally beautiful, to my
mind, by a gentle, uncomplaining sadness. It was impossible even to
think of the eyes of the murderess when I looked at her child.
Eunice's lower features, again, had none of her mother's regularity
of proportion. Her smile, simple and sweet, and soon passing away,
was certainly not an inherited smile on the maternal side. Whether she
resembled her father, I was unable to conjecture--having never seen him.
The one thing certain was, that not the faintest trace, in feature or
expression, of Eunice's mother was to be seen in Eunice herself. Of the
two girls, Helena--judging by something in the color of her hair, and by
something in the shade of her complexion--might possibly have suggested,
in those particulars only, a purely accidental resemblance to my
terrible prisoner of past times.

The revival of Mr. Gracedieu's spirits indicated a temporary change
only, and was already beginning to pass away. The eyes which had looked
lovingly at Eunice began to look languidly now: his head sank on the
pillow with a sigh of weak content. "My pleasure has been almost too
much for me," he said. "Leave me for a while to rest, and get used to
it."

Eunice kissed his forehead--and we left the room.

CHAPTER XL. THE BRUISED HEART.

When we stepped out on the landing, I observed that my companion paused.
She looked at the two flights of stairs below us before she descended
them. It occurred to me that there must be somebody in the house whom
she was anxious to avoid.

Arrived at the lower hall, she paused again, and proposed in a whisper
that we should go into the garden. As we advanced along the backward
division of the hall, I saw her eyes turn distrustfully toward the
door of the room in which Helena had received me. At last, my slow
perceptio