Therefore it is that the forlorn creature so longs to elude our eyes, and forever vanish away into nothingness! Her doom is just!" "O Hilda, your innocence is like a sharp steel sword!" exclaimed her friend.

"Your judgments are often terribly severe, though you seem all made up of gentleness and mercy.

Beatrice's sin may not have been so great: perhaps it was no sin at all, but the best virtue possible in the circumstances.

If she viewed it as a sin, it may have been because her nature was too feeble for the fate imposed upon her.

Ah!" continued Miriam passionately, "if I could only get within her consciousness!--if I could but clasp Beatrice Cenci's ghost, and draw it into myself! I would give my life to know whether she thought herself innocent, or the one great criminal since time began." As Miriam gave utterance to these words, Hilda looked from the picture into her face, and was startled to observe that her friend's expression had become almost exactly that of the portrait; as if her passionate wish and struggle to penetrate poor Beatrice's mystery had been successful.
"O, for Heaven's sake, Miriam, do not look so!" she cried.