"Cruel, crafty, treacherous."
"Oh, Madeline!"
"There, there; I didn't say that he,"—tapping the picture—"possessed these qualities. His eyes are unusual ones; did you ever see his mouth?"
"What a question—through all those whiskers? no; but he has beautiful teeth."
"So have tigers. There, dear, take the picture; I am no fit judge, perhaps. Remember, I once knew a man with the face of an angel, and the heart of a fiend. Your friend is certainly handsome; let us hope he is equally good."
"He is; I know it," asserted Claire.
Then she told her companion how she had met him at the house of a friend; how he was very learned and scientific; very grave and dignified; and very devoted to herself. And how, beyond these few facts, she knew little if anything of her blonde hero, Edward Percy.
Madeline received this information in a grave silence, whose chill affected Claire as well, and after a few moments, as if by mutual consent, they arose and entered the house.
Olive Girard had been absent a week; gone on a journey, sacred to her as any Meccan pilgrimage, a visit to the place of her husband's imprisonment. Every year she made this journey, returning home in some measure comforted; for she had seen her beloved.
She came back on this evening, as the two girls were mingling their voices in gay bravura duets—by mutual consent they avoided all songs of a pathetic order, for reasons which neither would have cared to acknowledge.