The pain was quite excruciating . Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch , and in colors so faint and pale , that the subjects could barely be conjectured . A dull , semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the surface of the canvas , into which the figures seemed to vanish while the eye sought most earnestly to fix them . But in every scene , however dubiously portrayed , Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own lineaments at various ages as in a dusty mirror . After poring several minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable pictures , he began to see that the painter had intended to represent him , now in the decline of life , as stripping the clothes from the backs of three half-starved children . `` Really , this puzzles me ! '' quoth Mr. Smith , with the irony of conscious rectitude . `` Asking pardon of the painter , I pronounce him a fool as well as a scandalous knave . A man of my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their clothes ! Ridiculous ! '' But while he spoke Memory had searched her fatal volume and found a page which with her sad calm voice she poured into his ear . It was not altogether inapplicable to the misty scene . It told how Mr. Smith had been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries , on the ground of a legal quibble , to commence a lawsuit against three orphan-children , joint-heirs to a considerable estate . Fortunately , before he was quite decided , his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice . As Memory ceased to read Conscience again thrust aside her mantle , and would have struck her victim with the envenomed dagger only that he struggled and clasped his hands before his heart . Even then , however , he sustained an ugly gash . Why should we follow Fancy through the whole series of those awful pictures ? Painted by an artist of wondrous power and terrible acquaintance with the secret soul , they embodied the ghosts of all the never-perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr. Smith . And could such beings of cloudy fantasy , so near akin to nothingness , give valid evidence against him at the day of judgment ? Be that the case or not , there is reason to believe that one truly penitential tear would have washed away each hateful picture and left the canvas white as snow .
But Mr. Smith , at a prick of Conscience too keen XXXXX be endured , bellowed aloud with impatient agony , and suddenly discovered that his three guests were gone .
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