, just as it shone in the top light of the
Blandamer window. It was the middle bar that Sophia had turned into a
caterpillar, and in pure wantonness left showing through, when for her
own purposes she had painted out the rest of the picture. Westray's
excitement was getting the better of him--he could not keep still; he
stood first on one leg and then on another, and drummed on the table
with his fingers.

The dealer put his hand on the architect's arm. "For God's sake keep
quiet!" he said; "don't excite yourself. You needn't think you have
found a gold mine. It ain't a ten thousand-guinea Vandyke. We can't
see enough yet to say what it is, but I'll bet my life you never get a
twenty-pound note for it."

But for all Westray's impatience, the afternoon was well advanced before
the head of the portrait was approached. There had been so few
interruptions, that the dealer felt called upon to extenuate the absence
of custom by explaining more than once that it was a very dull season.
He was evidently interested in his task, for he worked with a will till
the light began to fail. "Never mind," he said; "I will get a lamp; now
we have got so far we may as well go a bit further."

It was a full-face picture, as they saw a few minutes afterwards.
Westray held the lamp, and felt a strange thrill go through him, as he
began to make out the youthful and unwrinkled brow. Surely he knew that
high forehead--it was Anastasia's, and there was Anastasia's dark wavy
hair above it. "Why, it's a woman after all," the dealer said. "No, it
isn't; of course, how could it be with a brown velvet coat and
waistcoat? It's a young man with curly hair."

Westray said nothing; he was too much excited, too much interested to
say a word, for two eyes were peering at him through the mist. Then the
mist lifted under the dealer's cloth, and the eyes gleamed with a
startling brightness. They were light-grey eyes, clear and piercing,
that transfixed him and read the very thoughts that he was thinking.
Anastasia had vanished. It was Lord Blandamer that looked at him out of
the picture.

They were Lord Blandamer's eyes, impenetrable and observant as to-day,
but with the brightness of youth still in them; and the face,
untarnished by middle age, showed that the picture had been painted some
years ago. Westray put his elbows on the table and his head between his
hands, while he gazed at the face which had thus come back to life. The
eyes