ought by this fairy sign manual varied
exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the
beholders. Some fastidious persons--but they were exclusively of her
own sex--affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite
destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her
countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one
of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary
marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster. Masculine
observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration,
contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess
one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a
flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little or nothing of the
matter before,--Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so
perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object,
causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty,
whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably
and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary,
reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first
appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and
modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the
morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon h