“An unimportant advantage upon the frontier,” asked Gerald eagerly and breathlessly.  “To what frontier, Matilda, do you allude?”

“The Niagara,” was the reply.

“Are you quite sure of this?”

“So sure that I have long known he was there,” returned Matilda.

Gerald breathed more freely—­but again he questioned: 

“Matilda, when first I saw you last night, you were gazing intently upon yon portrait, (he pointed to that part of the temple where the picture hung suspended.) and it struck me that I had an indistinct recollection of the features.”

“Nothing more probable,” returned the American, answering his searching look with one of equal firmness.  You cannot altogether have forgotten Major Montgomerie.”

“Nay, the face struck me not as his.  May I look at it?”

“Assuredly.  Satisfy yourself.”

Gerald quitted the sofa, took up the light, and traversing the room raised the gauze curtain that covered the painting.  It was indeed the portrait of the deceased Major, habited in full uniform.

“How strange,” he mused, “that so vague an impression should have been conveyed to my mind last night, when now I recal without difficulty those well remembered features.”  Gerald sighed as he recollected under what different circumstances he had first beheld that face, and dropping the curtain once more, crossed the room and flung himself at the side of Matilda.

“For whom did you take it, if not for Major Montgomerie?” asked the American after a pause, and again her full dark eye was bent on his.

“Nay I scarcely know myself, yet I had thought it had been the portrait of him I have sworn to destroy.”

There was a sudden change of expression in the countenance of Matilda, but it speedily passed away, and she said with a faint smile.

“Whether is it more natural to find pleasure in gazing on the features of those who have loved, or those who have injured us!”

“Then whose was the miniature on which you so intently gazed, on that eventful night at Detroit?” asked Gerald.

“That,” said Matilda quickly, and paling as she spoke—­ “that was his—­I gazed on it only the more strongly to detest the original—­to confirm the determination I had formed to destroy him.”

“If then,” returned the youth, “why not now—­may I not see that portrait Matilda?  May I not acquire some knowledge of the unhappy man whose blood will so shortly stain my soul?”

“Impossible,” she replied.  “The miniature I have since destroyed.  While I thought the original within reach of my revenge, I could bear to gaze upon it, but no sooner had I been disappointed in my aim, than it became loathsome to me as the sight of some venemous reptile, and I destroyed it.”  This was said with undisguised bitterness.

Gerald sighed deeply.  Again he encircled the waist of his companion, and one of her fair, soft, velvet hands was pressed in his.