His wandering eyes fell on one of the ornaments of the room—­Mrs. Brewer’s album.  On first coming to live in the house, two years ago, he had examined this collection of domestic portraits, and subsequently, from time to time, had taken up the album to look at one photograph which interested him.  Among an assemblage of types excelling in ugliness of feature and hideousness of costume—­types of toil-worn age, of ungainly middle life, and of youth lacking every grace, such as are exhibited in the albums of the poor—­ there was discoverable one female portrait in which, the longer he gazed at it, Hilliard found an ever-increasing suggestiveness of those qualities he desired in woman.  Unclasping the volume, he opened immediately at this familiar face.  A month or two had elapsed since he last regarded it, and the countenance took possession of him with the same force as ever.

It was that of a young woman probably past her twentieth year.  Unlike her neighbours in the album, she had not bedizened herself before sitting to be portrayed.  The abundant hair was parted simply and smoothly from her forehead and tightly plaited behind; she wore a linen collar, and, so far as could be judged from the portion included in the picture, a homely cloth gown.  Her features were comely and intelligent, and exhibited a gentleness, almost a meekness of expression which was as far as possible from seeming affected.  Whether she smiled or looked sad Hilliard had striven vainly to determine.  Her lips appeared to smile, but in so slight a degree that perchance it was merely an effect of natural line; whereas, if the mouth were concealed, a profound melancholy at once ruled the visage.

Who she was Hilliard had no idea.  More than once he had been on the point of asking his landlady, but characteristic delicacies restrained him:  he feared Mrs. Brewer’s mental comment, and dreaded the possible disclosure that he had admired a housemaid or someone of yet lower condition.  Nor could he trust his judgment of the face:  perhaps it shone only by contrast with so much ugliness on either side of it; perhaps, in the starved condition of his senses, he was ready to find perfection in any female countenance not frankly repulsive.

Yet, no; it was a beautiful face.  Beautiful, at all events, in the sense of being deeply interesting, in the strength of its appeal to his emotions.  Another man might pass it slightingly; to him it spoke as no other face had ever spoken.  It awakened in him a consciousness of profound sympathy.

While he still sat at table his landlady came in.  She was a worthy woman of her class, not given to vulgar gossip.  Her purpose in entering the room at this moment was to ask Hilliard whether he had a likeness of himself which he could spare her, as a memento.

“I’m sorry I don’t possess such a thing,” he answered, laughing, surprised that the woman should care enough about him to make the request.  “But, talking of photographs, would you tell me who this is?”