Indeed, partaking the human nature of those who could perpetrate such deeds, she felt her own spotlessness impugnent.
Had there been but a single friend,--or not a friend, since friends were no longer to be confided in, after Miriam had betrayed her trust,--but, had there been any calm, wise mind, any sympathizing intelligence; or, if not these, any dull, half-listening ear into which she might have flung the dreadful secret, as into an echoless cavern, what a relief would have ensued! But this awful loneliness! It enveloped her whithersoever she went.

It was a shadow in the sunshine of festal days; a mist between her eyes and the pictures at which she strove to look; a chill dungeon, which kept her in its gray twilight and fed her with its unwholesome air, fit only for a criminal to breathe and pine in! She could not escape from it.

In the effort to do so, straying farther into the intricate passages of our nature, she stumbled, ever and again, over this deadly idea of mortal guilt.
Poor sufferer for another's sin! Poor wellspring of a virgin's heart, into which a murdered corpse had casually fallen, and whence it could not be drawn forth again, but lay there, day after day, night after night, tainting its sweet atmosphere with the scent of crime and ugly death! The strange sorrow that had befallen Hilda did not fail to impress its mysterious seal upon her face, and to make itself perceptible to sensitive observers in her manner and carriage.

A young Italian artist, who frequented the same galleries which Hilda haunted, grew deeply interested in her expression.

One day, while she stood before Leonardo da Vinci's picture of Joanna of Aragon, but evidently without seeing it,--for, though it had attracted her eyes, a fancied resemblance to Miriam had immediately drawn away her thoughts,--this artist drew a hasty sketch which he afterwards elaborated into a finished portrait.