how
translucent, how aerial she seemed! yet real and true to the lineaments
of her whom the young girl looked upon as her hereditary protector.

The beautiful woman turned, and, with a face full of loathing and scorn,
pointed to one of the reptiles beneath the feet of the chair. And while
Myrtle's eyes followed hers, the flattened and half-crushed creature
seemed to swell and spread like his relative in the old fable, like
the black dog in Faust, until he became of tenfold size, and at last of
colossal proportions. And, fearful to relate, the batrachian features
humanized themselves as the monster grew, and, shaping themselves more
and more into a remembered similitude, Myrtle saw in them a hideous
likeness of--No! no! it was too horrible, was that the face which had
been so close to hers but yesterday? were those the lips, the breath
from which had stirred her growing curls as he leaned over her while
they read together some passionate stanza from a hymn that was as
much like a love-song as it dared to be in godly company? A shadow of
disgust--the natural repugnance of loveliness for deformity-ran all
through her, and she shrieked, as she thought, and threw herself at the
feet of that other figure. She felt herself lifted from the floor, and
then a cold thin hand seemed to take hers. The warm life went out of
her, and she was to herself as a dimly conscious shadow that glided with
passive acquiescence wherever it was led. Presently she found herself in
a half-lighted apartment, where there were books on the shelves around,
and a desk with loose manuscripts lying on it, and a little mirror with
a worn bit of carpet before it. And while she looked, a great serpent
writhed in through the half-open door, and made the circuit of the room,
laying one huge ring all round it, and then, going round again, laid
another ring over the first, and so on until he was wound all round the
room like the spiral of a mighty cable, leaving a hollow in the centre;
and then the serpent seemed to arch his neck in the air, and bring his
head close down to Myrtle's face; and the features were not those of
a serpent, but of a man, and it hissed out the words she had read that
very day in a little note which said, "Come to my study to-morrow, and
we will read hymns together."

Again she was back in her little chamber, she did not know how, and the
two women were looking into her eyes with strange meaning in their own.
Something in them seemed to