These were Fancy , who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman , with a box of pictures on her back ; and Memory , in the likeness of a clerk , with a pen behind her ear , an inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm ; and lastly , behind the other two , a person shrouded in a dusky mantle which concealed both face and form . But Mr. Smith had a shrewd idea that it was Conscience . How kind of Fancy , Memory and Conscience to visit the old gentleman just as he was beginning to imagine that the wine had neither so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as when himself and the liquor were less aged ! Through the dim length of the apartment , where crimson curtains muffled the glare of sunshine and created a rich obscurity , the three guests drew near the silver-haired old man . Memory , with a finger between the leaves of her huge volume , placed herself at his right hand ; Conscience , with her face still hidden in the dusky mantle , took her station on the left , so as to be next his heart ; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon the table with the magnifying-glass convenient to his eye . We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many pictures which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box with the semblances of living scenes . One was a moonlight picture , in the background a lowly dwelling , and in front , partly shadowed by a tree , yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance , two youthful figures , male and female . The young man stood with folded arms , a haughty smile upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his eye as he glanced downward at the kneeling girl . She was almost prostrate at his feet , evidently sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly allowed her to lift her clasped hands in supplication . Her eyes she could not lift . But neither her agony , nor the lovely features on which it was depicted , nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed , appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man . He was the personification of triumphant scorn . Now , strange to say , as old Mr. Smith peeped through the magnifying-glass , which made the objects start out from the canvas with magical deception , he began to recognize the farmhouse , the tree and both the figures of the picture . The young man in times long past had often met his gaze within the looking-glass ; the girl was the very image of his first love -- his cottage-love , his Martha Burroughs . Mr. Smith was scandalized . `` Oh , vile and slanderous picture ! '' he exclaims . `` When have I triumphed over ruined innocence ? Was not Martha wedded in her teens to David Tomkins , who won her girlish love and long enjoyed her affection as a wife ? And ever since his death she has lived a reputable widow ! ''
Meantime , Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume , rustling them XXXXX and fro with uncertain fingers , until among the earlier pages she found one which had reference to this picture .
Through at between by in on since to under within