Leah lifted the glossy dark hair from her smooth pale forehead, and displayed the long, hard scar, that was so carefully concealed by the ebon folds. "I always wear my hair combed to hide it."

"Oh! Leah, Leah," sighed Lizzie, "how dreadful!"

"At sight of the blood that flowed freely from the wound, my father caught me in his arms, and kissing my blood-stained face, exclaimed again and again:

"'Fool, wretch, devil, that I am! Not for all the world would I have shed a drop of this precious blood. I beg your forgiveness, my darling--a thousand times, my child!' My cries, though suppressed, brought my mother to the room. With a well-assumed air of innocence and tenderness, she sought to wipe away the blood from my face, and bind up the gash upon my forehead. I all the while abstractedly wondering if I really did break the pipe; such was my weakness, such the power that was over and around my young life, and is yet, even to this very hour.

"My father gathered up the scattered fragments of the broken treasure and cast them into the fire; and from that day to this, he has never alluded in any manner to that occurrence. Always kind and tender to me, he seems to be ever endeavoring to atone for some wrong, and his long-continued silence assures me how vividly and regretfully he remembers his violence toward me."

"Shocking!" ejaculated Lizzie with emotion.

"Yes, it is shocking, dear Lizzie; for the horrible truth is ever before me, and this hated scar is the seal of the first lie of my tender young life. I never comb my hair away from my face, so morbidly am I impressed with the fear that those who see it will read the cause of its existence. Oh! Lizzie, that falsehood, and that cruel deception imposed upon a helpless child, were terrible indeed, too terrible to be borne.

"But I must proceed. I have dwelt thus minutely upon this first unhappy incident of my childhood, because it is a sort of guide-post to a long and dreary waste of years. It forms the headstone of my departed freedom, for, as I have said, in that evil moment when I yielded to her wicked, imperious will, I lost all moral power, and to this day, am worse than her vassal. Try as I may, I cannot shake off the habit; it has become second nature, and her influence now is so withering that I dare not make resistance; and yet, I despise myself for my weakness. Pity me, Lizzie, do not blame me! There's a moral want about me somewhere, Heaven knows, that no human agency can supply.

"My mother's assumed fondness for me led my father to believe that she loved me truly, and was tender and kind as she should be. He never dreamed of her deception. And to this day, he knows nothing of it, for I have never told him any of my trials and sorrows, since the day he struck me that undeserved blow. I love my father tenderly, and yet I cannot, dare not, unfold to his blinded vision the facts that have so long been concealed from him. No, Lizzie, I would rather suffer on as I must do, than darken his life by such a discovery.

"Thus you see something of how the years passed on. I, a helpless, ill-used orphan, growing older and and stronger day by day, and yet morally weaker and weaker, with no will or power of resistance, till I wonder sometimes that I am not an imbecile indeed.

"I thank the great God for my school-days. They have been days of pleasure and benefit to me. They have taken me from that home where I withered as the dew withers before the glaring sun, and cast me among pleasant friends, who seem to love me, and at least are true and kind. True and kind! Dear Lizzie, you cannot comprehend the significance of that expression. To my starved, wretched heart, these words are the fulness of all speech. I comprehend their meaning, and regard them as I do the burning stars afar, shining dimly upon a darkened world.

"Yes; again I say, I thank the great God for these school-days, that led me to know you, Lizzie--you, to whom my heart has learned to turn as a wounded, helpless bird would turn to its mother's sheltering wing for safety and protection."

Touched by Leah's story, and her protestations of love, Lizzie bowed her head in her hands, and a few tears fell through the slender fingers. Observing these tears, Leah bent forward and kissed them away, saying, "These are the first tears I ever saw fall for me." Then she continued:

"It is not necessary to dwell on the innumerable instances of cruelty and wrong that have marked my life, from the period just mentioned, on to the present. It is enough to say that many events in my home-life have left their searing impress on my heart and brain; and many, I thank God, have faded from my memory. But when I was fifteen, about the time you and I entered this seminary, an event took place, that has deeply wounded my heart, and will leave it sore forever. It was this:

"Very early on the morning of my fifteenth birthday, my father came to my chamber and congratulated me with many kisses, giving me his blessing. Then he said:

"'My daughter, I have here the miniature of your mother, taken before your birth. I had it set in diamonds then, for you, my child, little dreaming she would so soon be taken from us both. I have kept it securely locked away, waiting till you were old enough properly to appreciate its value. Now to-day, on your fifteenth birth-day, I have called forth the treasure, and give it to you forever. Take it; keep it carefully, my child, for the sake of the living as well as the dead.' My father laid the miniature in my hand, and turned away with ill-disguised emotion. Softly, and with trembling hand, I opened the casket that contained the treasure, and for the first time since her death, my eyes rested upon the dimly remembered features of my angel mother.

"O Lizzie Heartwell! At the first glimpse of that sweet, but half-forgotten face, I fell, like a helpless thing that I was, to the floor, prostrate with emotion. How long I remained thus overcome by sorrow and weeping, I know not. I knew nothing till the old familiar voice, harsh, cold, and cruel, fell upon my ear as the door opened.

"'Leah Mordecai, why are you lying there crying like a booby? What's the matter with you?' said my mother.

"Involuntarily I hushed my sobs, dried my tears, and arose to my feet.

"'What have you there, baby?' she continued.

"Without a word I handed her the casket, and as she regarded the sweet, mild face with cruel scorn, she said:

"'What's this you are blubbering over? Didn't you ever see a painted-faced doll before? Who gave you this?'

"'My father,' I replied fearfully; 'and it's the picture of my mother, my own dear mother that's dead.'

"My reply seemed to enrage her, and she said, 'The diamonds are beautiful, but I can't say as much for the face. I suppose you consider that you have no mother now; from all this whimpering. See here, Leah,' she added as a sudden thought seemed to strike her, 'You are too young to keep such a costly gift as this. I'll take it, and keep it myself till you have sense enough to know what diamonds are.'

"'Give it back to me,' I said excitedly, daring to hold out my trembling hand.

"'Indeed I shall not,' she angrily replied, pushing back the importunate hand.

"'Your father is a fool, to have given a child like you such a valuable thing as this. I'll see if he gives my Sarah this many diamonds when she is but a child of fifteen. And now, mind you, Leah Mordecai,' she continued, with a triumphant smile upon her wicked face, 'if you dare tell your father I took this from you, you'll repent it sorely. Mark my warning; say nothing about it unless asked, and then say you gave it to me for safe keeping.' She dropped the casket into her dress pocket, and swept coldly out of the room.

"The door closed behind her, and I was alone in my misery and my wrath. In my bitterness I cursed the woman who thus dared to crush a helpless little worm beneath her wicked foot, and, falling on my face again, I implored the great God to let me die, to take me to that mother whom I so deeply mourned.

"It's growing chilly out here, Lizzie," continued Leah after a pause; "suppose we leave the corridor, and find shelter in the hall of the wing. We can sit in the great window at the end of the hall, overlooking the sea. There we shall be secure from intrusion."

Lizzie bowed assent, and after the two girls were snugly seated in the great window, Leah continued her story:

"She has kept the miniature to this day, and for three long years, no matter how my eyes have longed for a glimpse of that sweet face, I have never dared to ask for it. Many times she has worn it, in great state, in her treacherous bosom, my father always supposing that I loaned it as a special token of affection,--such, at least, was the story she told him, and I have never dared contradict her." As Leah finished this incident, her dark eye seem to kindle with a new light and a quiver ran through her frame. She added, with strange emphasis:

"One thing I would say, Lizzie, before passing from this subject, and mark my words; my spirit is not so broken nor my sense of justice so blunted but that one day I shall have that miniature again. I have sworn it, and as I live, I'll keep my vow. But I must hasten on; it is already growing late. I come now to the last and sorest trouble of my life.

"For many years I have known Mark Abrams, the son of our rabbi. We have been children and friends together, almost from the time my mother died. He was always so gentle and kind to me in his boyhood, that I often wondered what the world would be without Mark Abrams in it. He was always the object of my childish admiration, and, indeed, the only friend I ever had who dared, or cared to show me any kindness. A year ago now; a little more than a year, he whispered to me a tender tale of love, and my poor heart thrilled with ecstasy at his words. Yes, he asked me to become his wife, when my school days should be ended, and I promised him that I would.