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 birth-mark 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 his wife's face, and
recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at the
evening hearth, his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld,
flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral Hand that wrote
mortality where he would fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to
shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance, with the peculiar
expression that his face often wore, to change the roses of her cheek
into a death-like paleness, amid which the Crimson Hand was brought
strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late, one night, when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to
betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first
time, voluntarily took up the subject.

"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at a
smile--"have you any recollection of a dream, last night, about this
odious Hand?"

"None!--none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added in a
dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
his emotion:--"I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep, it
had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."

"And you did dream of it," continued Georgiana hastily; for she dreaded
lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say--"A terrible
dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this
one