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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
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