it
is your affair and yours only--but you have excited my curiosity. The
portrait is that of my brother."

"I know," said Celia. "I do not mind your asking me; but I cannot tell
you. What passed between me and him----" She stopped; she was on
delicate ground; this man, with his worldly experience, his acute
intelligence, might lead her on to disclose what had happened that
night; she could not cope with him. "I do not know his name."

The Marquess bowed his head, and smiled slightly, as if he scented the
aroma of a commonplace romance.

"Quite so," he said. "A casual meeting. Such occurs occasionally in the
course of one's life, and I dare say the resemblance you noticed was
only a fancied one. It must have been," he added, looking on the ground,
and speaking in an absent way; "for as it happens, my brother"--he
nodded towards the portrait--"was unmarried, had no relations other than
myself and my son." He turned away to the fire again. "Oh, yes; only a
fancied one. Good night."

This was a definite dismissal, and Celia, murmuring, "Good night, my
lord," went up the stairs. At the bend of the corridor she glanced down
involuntarily. The Marquess had turned from the fire again, and was
looking, with bent brows, at the portrait.

CHAPTER XIV

As Celia undressed slowly, going over the scene that had taken place in
the hall below, recalling the changes in the Marquess's expressive face,
his strange manner, with its suggestion of anger and impatience, she
sought in vain for an explanation. Had he actually been annoyed and
irritated by her admission that she had noticed a resemblance in the
portrait of his dead brother to someone whom she had met? He had said,
emphatically, that it was only a fancied resemblance, and she accepted
his decision. It certainly could be only a freak of imagination on her
part, seeing that the Marquess's brother had not married--indeed, it was
ridiculous to suppose that there was any connection between the noble
family of the Sutcombes and the unknown man in the poverty-stricken room
at Brown's Buildings. Woman-like, her mind dwelt more on him than on the
Marquess's impatience and annoyance. There was something strange,
mysterious, in the fact that, not only was she haunted by the memory of
the young man, but that here, at Thexford Hall, she should fancy a
portrait of one of the family resembled him.

It did not need much to recall him to her mind; for it may be said that
in no idl