ng out of the marred and brutal
face, met his own with a certain claim of kinship. There existed a
tragic freemasonry between himself and this outcasted being, begotten
of a common knowledge, a common experience. As a boy Richard hated this
picture, studiously avoided the sight of it. It had suggested
comparisons which wounded his self-respect too shrewdly and endangered
his self-security. He hated it no longer, finding grim solace, indeed,
in its sad society.

And it was thus, in silent parley with this rather dreadful companion,
as the blear February twilight descended upon the bare, black trees and
snow-clad land without, and upon the very miscellaneous furnishings of
the many-windowed gallery within, that Julius March now discovered
Richard Calmady. He had returned, across the park, from one of the
quaint brick-and-timber cottages just without the last park gate, at
the end of Sandyfield Church-lane. A labourer's wife was dying,
painfully enough, of cancer, and he had administered the Blessed
Sacrament to her, there, in her humble bedchamber. The august promises
and adorable consolations of that mysterious rite remained very
sensibly present to him on his homeward way. His spirit was uplifted by
the confirmation of the divine compassion therein perpetually renewed,
perpetually made evident. And, it followed, that coming now upon
Richard Calmady alone, here, in the stark, unnatural pallor of the
winter dusk, holding silent communion with that long-ago victim of
merciless practices and depraved tastes, not only caused him a painful
shock, but also moved him with fervid desire to offer comfort and
render help.--Yet, what to say, how to approach Richard without risk of
seeming officiousness and consequent offense, he could not tell. The
young man's experiences and his own were so conspicuously far apart.
For a moment he stood uncertain and silent, then he said:--

"That picture always fills me with self-reproach."

Richard looked round with a certain lofty courtesy by no means
encouraging. And, as he did so, Julius March was conscious of receiving
a further, and not less painful impression. For Richard's face was very
still, not with the stillness of repose, but with that of fierce
emotion held resolutely in check, while in his eyes was a desolation
rivalling that of the eyes portrayed by the great Spanish artist upon
the canvas close at hand.

"When I first came to Brockhurst, that picture used to hang in the
stud