with an acuteness almost
preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of his own.

"And this should be the house," said he, looking up and down the front,
before he knocked. "Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it
will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it
is framed within them, painted strongly, and glowing in the richest
tints--the faces of the portraits--the figures and action of the
sketch!"

He knocked.

"The portraits! Are they within?" inquired he, of the domestic; then
recollecting himself--"your master and mistress! Are they at home?"

"They are, sir," said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,
"and the Portraits too!"

The guest was admitted into a parlor, communicating by a central door
with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was
empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes
were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured
representatives, who had long been the object of so singular an
interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.

They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing
before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich
and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel
with one hand, while the other grasped that of his bride. The
pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished
splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across the room rather than
to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been almost
prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had successively
dwelt upon her countenance, deepening, with the lapse of time, into a
quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made it the very
expression of the portrait. Walter's face was moody and dull, or
animated only by fitful flashes, which left a heavier darkness for
their momentary illumination. He looked from Elinor to her portrait,
and thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he finally stood
absorbed.

The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him,
on its progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his
mind. Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied
itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which he had
foreshadowed?

Still, Walter remained silent befor