The Egg-shaped Likeness

THE UPLAND HOUSE into which my steward had [ventured] to make strong-arm ingang, rather than let me, in my forlorn wounded fettle, to pass a night in the open loft, was one of those heaps of blended gloom and greatness which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in truth than in the daresay of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all looks it had been for a while only and pretty lately forsaken. We settled ourselves in one of the smallest and least wanthriftly forseen flats. It lay in an outlying small keep of the building. Its glings were rich, yet tattered and olden. Its walls were hung with stepclothwork and bedecked with manifold and manishape shieldwear [trophies], together with an unoftenly great tel of mighty lively ourtimely mealings in frames of rich golden Arabian-like. In these mealings, which hanged from the walls not only in their main topsides, but in mighty many nooks which the odd building of the upland house made needed-in these mealings my arising dwale, maybe, had werthed me to take deep wastomshat; so that I bade Pedro to shut the heavy shutters of the room-since it was already night-to light the tongues of a tall glimstick which stood by the head of my bed-and to throw open far and wide the edged hangclothes of black [velvet] which bewrapped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might asake myself, if not to sleep, at least [alternately] to the yondthinking of these mealings, and the alogging of a small wal which had been found upon the pillow, and which meant to carp and bewrite them.

Long-long I read-and betakenly, betakenly I gazed. Quickly and wulderily the longlogs flew by and the deep midnight came. The howstand of the glimstick athrote me, and outreaching my hand with hardship, rather than dreef my slumbering steward, I put it so as to throw its beams more fully upon the book.

But the deed brought an inhit altogether unforesmatched. The beams of the many glims (for there were many) now fell within a nook of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-siles. I thus saw in lifelike light a mealing all unyemed before. It was the likeness of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glimpsed at the mealing hurriedly, and then shut my eyes. Why I did this was not at first seeming even to my own yeming. But while my lids blove thus shut, I ran over in my mind my orsake for so shutting them. It was a whimsical shrithe to get time for thought-to make wis that my sight had not swiked me-to cool and quell my daydream for a more earnest and more known gaze. In a pretty few breakwhiles I again looked fastenedly at the mealing.

That I now saw aright I could not and would not ink; for the first flashing of the glims upon that hemprag had seemed to scatter the dreamy sluggishness which was stealing over my [senses], and to startle me at once into waking life.

The likeness, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a [mere] head and shoulders, done in what is lorewise named a [vignette] way; much in the style of the most liked heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the bright hair melted unyemingly into the hazy yet deep shadow which shaped the back-ground of the whole. The frame was egg-shaped, richly gilded and bedecked in [Moresque]. As a thing of craft nothing could be more bewonderable than the mealing itself. But it could have been neither the making of the work, nor the undying comeliness of the nebb, which had so hastily and so hardspunly [moved] me. Least of all, could it have been that my daydream, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living lede. I saw at once that the oddnesses of the layout, of the [vignetting], and of the frame, must have driven off such thought right away-must have forehindered even its fleeting fun. Thinking earnestly upon these [points], I blove, for a longlog maybe, half sitting, half lying back, with my sight fastened upon the likeness. At length, befrithed with the true hiddle of its inhit, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the mealing in an utter life-likeliness of sayness, which, at first startling, at last befuddled, overcome, and affrighted me. With deep and worshipful awe I insteadened the glimstick in its former howstand. The werthe of my deep worry being thus shut from sight, I sought eagerly the wal which talked about the mealings and their yores. Turning to the tel which bespoke the egg-shaped likeness, I there read the hazy and unwonely words which follow:

"She was a maiden of seldomest comeliness, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the time when she saw, and loved, and wedded the mealer. He, faith-heated, alogsome, stern, and having already a bride in his Craft; she a maiden of seldomest comeliness, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young deer; loving and holding all things dear; hating only the Craft which was her [rival]; dreading only the mealboard and [brushes] and other untoward tools which anam her of the nebb of her lover. It was thus a dreadful thing for this lady to hear the mealer speak of his wish to meal even his young bride. But she was meek and hearsome, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high small keep-room where the light dripped upon the wan hemprag only from overhead. But he, the mealer, took wulder in his work, which went on from longlog to longlog, and from day to day. And be was a faith-heated, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in frolics; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone small keep withered the health and the soul of his bride, who pined seenlibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, unwhiningly, for she saw that the mealer (who had high stardom) took a fiery and burning queme in his upgave, and wrought day and night to meal her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more unsouled and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the likeness spoke of its blee in low words, as of a mighty wonder, and a reckonedness not less of the might of the mealer than of his deep love for her whom he mealed so outstandingly well. But at length, as the work drew nearer to its ending, there were let in none into the small keep; for the mealer had grown wild with the ellen of his work, and turned his eyes from hemprag [merely], even to look at the nebb of his wife. And he would not see that the hues which he spread upon the hemprag were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks bad gone by, and but little blove to do, other than one [brush] upon the mouth and one hue upon the eye, the soul of the lady again flickered up as the blaze within the opening of the chell. And then the [brush] was given, and then the hue was put; and, for one breakwhile, the mealer stood inthralled before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew quakey and pretty wan, and aghast, and shouting with a loud steven, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned hastily to look at his beloved:-She was dead!