ty, and is, indeed, beautiful in her old age. Perhaps I resemble her
without possessing any of her beauty."

"Ah, Miss Bawn," he said, looking at me roguishly, "'handsome is as
handsome does.'"

"That is so," I said. "My grandmother has often told me that if I am
good and gentle no one will trouble about my looks."

He turned suddenly then and he said in a singularly sweet voice--

"Dear child! dear child!"

Then he took my hand as though I had been indeed a child and led me up
to the portrait.

"What do you see?" he asked.

"I never could be like anything so beautiful," I said, with indignation.
"If Gran looked like that she must have been beautiful indeed, and she
must have looked like it."

The young girl in the portrait was wearing a white satin gown. She was
painted in the manner of the period, with a lamb beside her which she
had wreathed with roses; and she stood in a flowery meadow. She had an
armful of roses like Flora's self, and as she stood one or two escaped
and fell down her dress. She had the long neck which has come to me, a
beautiful small head, golden hair, warm fair colouring and violet eyes.

"I never could be like it," I said again.

Captain Cardew smiled. I saw him take the miniature from his pocket and
look at it and again at the portrait as though he compared them.

"You see the likeness, do you not?" he asked.

"Yes, there is a likeness," I acknowledged.

"I came here to feast my eyes upon it," he said. "I was frantic at the
loss of the miniature. I had seen this picture before, long ago, when I
was a boy. When I first saw ... the original of the miniature I
remembered this and thought it the strangest coincidence. I wanted to
find out for myself if the likeness was really so strong."

"And it was?" I asked.

"It was. Yet you are more like the miniature than the portrait is."

"Ah, no," I said. "I could not be. The portrait is very beautiful."

"You are more like her," he repeated.

We had left the doors of the gallery ajar, and now we heard plainly a
heavy foot coming up the stairs and puffing and wheezing as of a very
stout, asthmatic person ascending.

"It is Bridget Kelly," he said, turning and smiling at me. "She was much
disturbed that I would not have her as _cicerone_, but she remembered me
from the old days, and, seeing that I would not have her, she left me to
mind the house while she did her marketing."

"I found the door open when I came to it," I said.

"Br