Rivers broke the spring, and his eyes gazed with serpent-like fixedness upon the exquisitely beautiful features which it developed.
His whole appearance underwent a change.

The sternness had departed from his face which now put on an air of abstraction and wandering, not usually a habit with it.

He gazed long and fixedly upon the portrait, unheeding the efforts of the girl to obtain it, and muttering at frequent intervals detached sentences, having little dependence upon one another:-- "Ay--it is she," he exclaimed--"true to the life--bright, beautiful, young, innocent--and I--But let me not think!"-- Then turning to the maid-- "Fond fool--see you the object of adoration with him whom you so unprofitably adore.

He loves _her_, girl--she, whom I--but why should I tell it you?
is it not enough that we have both loved and loved in vain; and, in my revenge, you too shall enjoy yours." "I have nothing to revenge, Guy Rivers--nothing for you, above all others, to revenge.

Give me the miniature; I have it in trust, and it must not go out of my possession." She clung to him as she spoke, fruitlessly endeavoring at the recovery of that which he studiously kept from her reach.