id her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed.
"There: it is passing away now, but when you spoke you seemed
frightened to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?"

"Nothing, nothing," answered Elinor, hastily. "You paint my face with
your own fantasies. Well, come for me to-morrow, and we will visit
this wonderful artist."

But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a
remarkable expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face
of his mistress. It was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance
with what should have been the feelings of a maiden on the eve of
wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of her heart.

"A look!" said Elinor to herself. "No wonder that it startled him, if
it expressed what I sometimes feel. I know, by my own experience, how
frightful a look may be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of
it at the time--I have seen nothing of it since--I did but dream it."

And she busied herself about the embroidery of a ruff, in which she
meant that her portrait should be taken.

The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native
artists who, at a later period than this, borrowed their colors from
the Indians, and manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts.
Perhaps, if he could have revoked his life and prearranged his destiny,
he might have chosen to belong to that school without a master, in the
hope of being at least original, since there were no works of art to
imitate, nor rules to follow. But he had been born and educated in
Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or beauty of
conception, and every touch of the master-hand, in all the most famous
pictures, in cabinets and galleries, and on the walls of churches, till
there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn. Art could add
nothing to its lessons, but Nature might. He had therefore visited a
world whither none of his professional brethren had preceded him, to
feast his eyes on visible images that were noble and picturesque, yet
had never been transferred to canvas. America was too poor to afford
other temptations to an artist of eminence, though many of the colonial
gentry, on the painter's arrival, had expressed a wish to transmit
their lineaments to posterity by means of his skill. Whenever such
proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant, and
seemed to look him through and through. If he beheld only a sl