The other,--how delicate, how translucent, how aerial she seemed! yet real and true to the lineaments of her whom the young girl looked upon as her hereditary protector.
The beautiful woman turned, and, with a face full of loathing and scorn, pointed to one of the reptiles beneath the feet of the chair.

And while Myrtle's eyes followed hers, the flattened and half-crushed creature seemed to swell and spread like his relative in the old fable, like the black dog in Faust, until he became of tenfold size, and at last of colossal proportions.

And, fearful to relate, the batrachian features humanized themselves as the monster grew, and, shaping themselves more and more into a remembered similitude, Myrtle saw in them a hideous likeness of--No! no! it was too horrible, was that the face which had been so close to hers but yesterday?
were those the lips, the breath from which had stirred her growing curls as he leaned over her while they read together some passionate stanza from a hymn that was as much like a love-song as it dared to be in godly company?
A shadow of disgust--the natural repugnance of loveliness for deformity-ran all through her, and she shrieked, as she thought, and threw herself at the feet of that other figure.

She felt herself lifted from the floor, and then a cold thin hand seemed to take hers.

The warm life went out of her, and she was to herself as a dimly conscious shadow that glided with passive acquiescence wherever it was led.