his work would be worth nothing; but the name was carried
on, and the register kept, at a little place somewhere in Soho, where,
on the strength of his old repute, they keep up a small trade with
inferior hands. I gave them a handsome order for a thing that will never
be handsome, I fear--my old battered physiognomy. And then I produced
the locket which in some queer state of mind you had given me, and made
them hunt out their old books, and at last discovered the very entry.
But to verify it I must go to Paris, where his son is living."

"Whose son? Lord Castlewood's?"

"Erema, have you taken leave of your senses? What son has Lord
Castlewood? The artist's son, to be sure; the son of the man who did the
likeness. Is it the vellum and the stuff upon it that has so upset your
mind? I am glad that you showed it to me, because it would have been
mean to do otherwise. But show it to no one else, my dear, except your
cousin, Lord Castlewood. He has the first right of all to know it,
though he will laugh at it as I do. Trumpery of that sort! Let them
produce a certified copy of a register. If they could do that, need they
ever have shot that raffish old lord--I beg pardon, my dear--your highly
respected grandfather? No, no; don't tell me. Nicholas Hockin was never
in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep
your pluck up."

"I never can thank you enough," I replied, "for such inspiriting
counsel. I have been rather miserable all this day. And I have had such
a letter from America!"

Without my intending any offer of the kind, or having such idea at the
furthest tip of any radius of mind, I found myself under a weight about
the waist, like the things the young girls put on now. And this was the
arm of the Major, which had been knocked about in some actions, but was
useful still to let other people know, both in this way and that, what
he thought of them. And now it let me know that he pitied me.

This kindness from so old a soldier made me partial to him. He had taken
an age to understand me, because my father was out of the army almost
before I was born, and therefore I had no traditions. Also, from want
of drilling, I had been awkward to this officer, and sometimes mutinous,
and sometimes a coward. All that, however, he forgave me when he saw
me so downhearted; and while I was striving to repress all signs, the
quivering of my lips perhaps suggested thoughts of kissing. Whereupon
he kissed m