."

So saying, Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne tapped Lady Dargan on the arm, and then
turned sharply to see if her daughters had been listening. She saw that
they had; and though herself and not her sister was to blame, she said:

"Sophie, you are very indiscreet! If you had daughters of your own, you
would probably be more careful--though Heaven only knows, for you were
always difficult!"

With this they vanished up the staircase, Mrs. Gasgoyne's daughters,
Delia and Agatha, smiling at each other and whispering about Gaston.

Meanwhile the seeker after a kingdom was shown into Sir William
Belward's study. No one was there. He walked to the mantelpiece, and,
leaning his arm on it, looked round. Directly in front of him on the
wall was the picture of a lady in middle-life, sitting in an arbour. A
crutch lay against one arm of her chair, and her left hand leaned on an
ebony silver-topped cane. There was something painful, haunting, in the
face--a weirdness in the whole picture. The face was looking into the
sunlight, but the effect was rather of moonlight--distant, mournful. He
was fascinated; why, he could not tell. Art to him was an unknown book,
but he had the instinct, and he was quick to feel. This picture struck
him as being out of harmony with everything else in the room. Yet it
had, a strange compelling charm.

Presently he started forward with an exclamation. Now he understood the
vague, eerie influence. Looking out from behind the foliage was a face,
so dim that one moment it seemed not to be there, and then suddenly to
flash in--as a picture from beyond sails, lightning-like, across the
filmy eyes of the dying. It was the face of a youth, elf-like, unreal,
yet he saw his father's features in it.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It seemed very dim. Indeed,
so delicately, vaguely, had the work been done that only eyes like
Gaston's, trained to observe, with the sight of a hawk and a sense of
the mysterious, could have seen so quickly or so distinctly. He drew
slowly back to the mantel again, and mused. What did it mean? He was
sure that the woman was his grandmother.

At that moment the door opened, and an alert, white-haired man stepped
in quickly, and stopped in the centre of the room, looking at his
visitor. His deep, keen eyes gazed out with an intensity that might
almost be fierceness, and the fingers of his fine hands opened and shut
nervously. Though of no great stature, he had singular dignity. He was