It is a peculiarity of this picture, that its profoundest expression eludes a straightforward glance, and can only be caught by side glimpses, or when the eye falls casually upon it; even as if the painted face had a life and consciousness of its own, and, resolving not to betray its secret of grief or guilt, permitted the true tokens to come forth only when it imagined itself unseen.

No other such magical effect has ever been wrought by pencil.
Now, opposite the easel hung a looking-glass, in which Beatrice's face and Hilda's were both reflected.

In one of her weary, nerveless changes of position, Hilda happened to throw her eyes on the glass, and took in both these images at one unpremeditated glance.

She fancied--nor was it without horror--that Beatrice's expression, seen aside and vanishing in a moment, had been depicted in her own face likewise, and flitted from it as timorously.
"Am I, too, stained with guilt ?" thought the poor girl, hiding her face in her hands.
Not so, thank Heaven! But, as regards Beatrice's picture, the incident suggests a theory which may account for its unutterable grief and mysterious shadow of guilt, without detracting from the purity which we love to attribute to that ill-fated girl.

Who, indeed, can look at that mouth,--with its lips half apart, as innocent as a babe's that has been crying, and not pronounce Beatrice sinless?
It was the intimate consciousness of her father's sin that threw its shadow over her, and frightened her into a remote and inaccessible region, where no sympathy could come.