urve of beauty such as would make the sculptor drop
his chisel in despair--with a lip that might have belonged to Juno and a
brow that should have been set beneath the helmet of Athena--with the
glorious dark eye fringed with long sweeping lashes and the wealth of
the dark brown hair swept back in masses of rippled and tangled shadow
that caught and lost the eye continually,--what a perfect vision of
high-born beauty was that face, the patent of nobility coming direct
from heaven!

And what was that which she held in her hand, and the removal of which
had produced so wonderful a transformation? One of those masks of dark
red golden wire, so fine as to be almost impalpable, and wrought by
fingers of such cunning skill that while it concealed the natural skin
of the face, every lineament and even every sweep and dimple was copied,
as if the moulder had been working in wax--the eye looking through as
naturally as in the ordinary face, and even the very play of the lips
permitted. That strange red light which had seemed to permeate the whole
face and affect even the eyes, had merely been the red metallic glitter
of the gold, leaving little work for the imagination to complete a
picture fascinating as unnatural.

"Great God!--can such beauty be real?" broke out Leslie, when he had
gazed for one instant on the splendid vision before him. "Matchless,
peerless, glorious woman! Let me come nearer! Let me look longer on
God's master-work, if I even die at the sight!"

Here was the faithful lover of Josephine Harris half an hour
before,--and in what a situation! Oh man, man, what an eye for
miscellaneous beauty is that with which your sex is gifted! All Mormons
at heart, it is to be feared, however a more self-denying canon may be
observed perforce! It is not certain that Tom Leslie would have run away
with his new divinity, had the chance been offered at that moment; and
it is not certain that he would _not_ have done so. Very fortunately,
the opportunity was wanting. Very fortunately, too, the storm had not
yet ceased altogether, and the two ladies in the other room were likely
to be too busy in restoring and being restored, to hear very clearly
what was going on within.

"Back!" said the sharp voice of the sorceress, at the impassioned tone
of the last words and that clasping of the hands which told that the
subject might be kneeling the next moment. "Back! No nearer, on your
life! I have not the power of life and death, bu