ready in fragments, and
although she clutched half of the other, the broken half had fallen
and rolled away. I have it somewhere. I will show it to you. I had no
time, indeed, to see what it was they were doing, for behind me
bounded that lover like a whirlwind, thrust one brother and the other
aside, seized the girl, darted over the door-sill with her, and down
the crags of the mountain path. He should have what help I could give.
I was after him, stooping to catch up the fragment of painting as I
turned, down the cliff's edge, they following. And all at once I
stopped as if paralyzed to the marrow by a clap of thunder, and turned
my head to see the old man with his white hair streaming, and his arms
uplifted in his cursing, as he came leaping on, and the next moment
the shelf of overhanging rock had fallen, had cleft the house in
twain, and mother and father and sons and hounds were dust with the
dust flying over the precipices. I saw it."

"Oh!" I cried, with my hands over my eyes. "Why did it not strike you
blind?"

"And here," said Colonel Vorse, leading my steps to an old cabinet in
an alcove, "ought to be the half of that little likeness I picked up
as I ran. I wonder what became of the other half--what became of the
girl--if the lover married her--if she knew enough to know he didn't
marry her--if she lived long enough for him to find out she was a
fool--if she was the last of the Rayniers?" As he ceased, he put the
half of the little miniature into my hands.

It was a broken bit of ivory, and on it the upper part of a face,
sketchily done, with pansy-dark eyes and blush rose skin--without a
frame. I had the frame.

A heart beat, a fluttering breath, a reeling sense of the world
staggering away from me, and then my bewildered senses were at work
again, and an agony like death was cutting me to the heart as we
resumed our walking.

Should I tell him? Should I go on with my secret, my inheritance, my
curse, and let no man know? If it ate out my heart, the sooner to
end; my heart was broken now. Never, never now could fireside shine
for me, could lover's lips be mine, could little faces sun themselves
in my smile.

We paused before the great window, with those vague white shapes
before us, for my feet would not obey me, and the light behind us
shone on the bit of ivory. If I told him, it would be easier for him
to bear; he would see the impossibility, he would desire my love no
longer. My fearful inheritan