Page:The Head - Keepsake 1834.pdf/21

Rh The girl unconsciously looked towards the harsh features, made yet harsher by the dark marble in which they were carved. And she started, for she felt that even that stern and sculptured countenance had more of human sympathy than the pale lip and cold eye of the living listener; yet love is desperate in its hope; she flung herself at his feet, she hid her face on the hand which she grasped, for she dared not look up and meet that fixed and passionless face; but still she pleaded as those plead who pray for a life far dearer than their own. "He is so young—so good—there is so much happiness before us; his poor old father will die—he has no other child—and I—-he must not look to me to supply his place. God of heaven! have you never loved—have you no recollections of affection that can move you to pity others!" "I have!" said Julian; and rising from his seat, he took the arm of the agitated girl, and led her to a recess in the apartment, and drew back a curtain. Horror for a moment suspended every other feeling; for, laid upon a cushion, the long fair hair streaming around, was a female head, preserved by some curious chemical process; the eyes were closed, but as if in sleep; colour had departed from lip and cheek, and something beyond even the rigidity of stone was on the face. The petitioner turned from the dead to the living, whose ashy colour, and wild fierce eye, struck more terror to her soul than the mournful mockery of the head, where life's likeness was fearfully rendered. Julian gazed on the dread memorial which he had snatched from the scaffold, with that strange mixture of hate and love, the mind's most terrible element, whereof comes despair and madness; then turning slowly to the bewildered girl, said, in a low voice, but whose whisper was like thunder when the flash is commissioned to destroy,— "That head belonged to my mistress—she was an