"Remember her, Skaife! What can that do for me? Remember that, but for the insane promptings of some demon, jealous of my happiness, I might now have her beside me, a living, breathing creature, instead of only this!" And he drew back the veil from his painting, and there, on the speaking canvass, was Minnie—oh, Minnie, as though she breathed before him! There is nothing so faithful as memory. It was an altar-piece, of which he had before spoken—a Madonna and child. The eyes looked forth serene and beautiful, patient, and with that predestined look which such a face should have—a look of future sorrow, future and immortal hope. Minnie's was all a face should be for so holy a purpose; and when Skaife remembered all she had suffered, he felt how well Tremenhere had chosen the subject, to call her features into life's seeming.
"It is like her, is it not?" asked the latter, fixing his deep, earnest gaze upon the face. "And I have tried to throw into the countenance something of the trouble I have seen there—something of what must have been, when she was at Marseilles! Skaife, I went there a week since, and learned all; since my return, I have passed the heavy hours of day and night in pourtraying the look which I divined hers, in that sad room where my child was born!"
"Have you been there?" exclaimed the other, a joy almost beyond controul bursting his heart; for he had come to that room in fear, of what he might hear.
"Yes," answered Tremenhere, looking up, surprised at his tone; "but I do not think you quite understand me, by your tone. I have been in the humble house of the toiling woman and mother—of the one I lured from every luxury, to cast, with a blighted name, into want!—want, Skaife—for this she has known! Now do you comprehend my utter wretchedness? Oh, believe that there can be no sorrow, no remorse like mine! I sit here for hours searching in my memory for every tone of her voice, every look of her sweet face! I tell you this, for self-abasement; you, at least shall know me as I am, though to the world I may be a mystery—to some, a monster!"
"From my soul I pity you, Tremenhere; but oh! I rejoice that her memory is now so sacred in your eyes from stain."
"Sacred and pure as an angel's, Skaife! Yet what can that avail now?"
"I feared," uttered the other, "that—I scarcely know how to speak my thought—that, in short, you might be—were, dazzled by Lady Dora Vaughan!"
"By her!" and he laughed in derision. "Have you, too, known the human heart so ill, to suppose that, having once loved Minnie, even though unjust, cruel, her murderer, I could ever place another, and such a one as Lady Dora, near her? No, no; be my feelings what they may, I never will dream even of so vain a thing as alleviating them by any union; still less with Lady Dora, than another!"
"I have, nevertheless, heard strange rumours."
"Have you? well, 'tis well. I would have it thus; 'tis——" He paused. "Let us change the subject," he said hastily; "time will prove all of us."