`` The features are perfect Elinor , '' answered Walter , `` and at the first glance the expression seemed also hers ; but I could fancy that the portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it . The eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression . Nay , it is grief and terror . Is this like Elinor ? '' `` Compare the living face with the pictured one , '' said the painter . Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress , and started . Motionless and absorbed , fascinated , as it were , in contemplation of Walter 's portrait , Elinor 's face had assumed precisely the expression of which he had just been complaining . Had she practised for whole hours before a mirror , she could not have caught the look so successfully . Had the picture itself been a mirror , it could not have thrown back her present aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth . She appeared quite unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover . `` Elinor , '' exclaimed Walter , in amazement , `` what change has come over you ? '' She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her hand , and thus attracted her notice ; then with a sudden tremor she looked from the picture to the face of the original . `` Do you see no change in your portrait ? '' asked she . `` In mine ? None , '' replied Walter , examining it . `` But let me see . Yes ; there is a slight change -- an improvement , I think , in the picture , though none in the likeness . It has a livelier expression than yesterday , as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes and about to be uttered from the lips . Now that I have caught the look , it becomes very decided . ''
While he was intent on these observations XXXXX turned to the painter .
Elinor Nay Walter aspect dialogue features first glance hours portrait