He breathed more freely, and seemed to himself more prepared for the meeting.

He took his station by the recess of the window: in vain--he could rest in no spot: he walked to and fro, pausing only for a moment as some object before him reminded him of past and more tranquil hours.

The books he had admired and which, at his departure, had been left in their usual receptacle at another part of the house, he now discovered on the tables: they opened of themselves at the passages he had read aloud to Constance: those pages, in his presence, she had not seemed to admire; he was inexpressibly touched to perceive that, in his absence, they had become dear to her.

As he turned with a beating heart from this silent proof of affection, he was startled by the sudden and almost living resemblance to Constance, which struck upon him in a full-length picture opposite--the picture of her father.

That picture, by one of the best of our great modern masters of the art, had been taken of Vernon in the proudest epoch of his prosperity and fame.