It was a bright day, and the garish sun streamed into the room. With the eye of his profession for effect, he lowered the crimson curtains before the windows, that their reflection might throw the rosy hue of life on the pallid features he was to delineate.
He paused as he stood beside the bier, with his hand upon the linen that shrouded her features. Some deep emotion appeared struggling in his mind, and he withdrew his hand. Ashamed of his hesitation, with a sudden effort he threw back the covering, and with a cry, sunk upon the floor.
An hour passed, and with glazed eyes, and horror-struck visage, the painter cowered beside the bier, with his immovable gaze fixed on the still face before him.
“His wife!” he muttered at intervals; “His wife!—false—false to me—I that loved her so madly—trusted her so fondly! His wife—his wife!”
At length he arose, and seizing his brush, commenced painting with a rapidity and success that surprised himself. The picture speedily grew under his hands into life and beauty; but it did not represent the dull room with its lifeless inmate. The starry heavens, and the green vale were faithfully delineated—a young girl, in the pride of successful beauty, leaned against an open window—and he livingly portrayed the peerless loveliness of the embodiment of his young ideal.
Before her knelt a youth wearing the features of the artist himself, but so changed—so full of the anguish of a broken spirit, that one glance revealed the history of his slighted love and maddened heart.
Mervin went forth from that apartment with faltering steps, and the cold dew of agony upon his brow. How he reached his home he knew not. He found a letter on the table—it was the long-delayed communication of Dr. L——; he retained self-command enough to read and understand its contents—but it was the last effort of his over-wrought mind.
His words to his lost love had been prophetic! The tie that bound him to reason was rent—the bright promise of his opening years buried in the grave of his young idol.
Some kind friend restored him to his native land; and he now wanders about the home of his father, a melancholy and harmless wreck.