* * * * *

The drawing-room was already lighted with a flickering array of candles upon the mantelpiece and along the walls, producing the pretty, starry effect which candles give without very much light.  As I had not the smallest idea what I was about to see, for Morphew’s “speaking likeness” was very hurriedly said, and only half comprehensible in the bewilderment of my faculties, my first glance was at this very unusual illumination, for which I could assign no reason.  The next showed me a large full-length portrait, still in the box in which apparently it had travelled, placed upright, supported against a table in the centre of the room.  My father walked straight up to it, motioned to me to place a smaller table close to the picture on the left side, and put his lamp upon that.  Then he waved his hand towards it, and stood aside that I might see.

It was a full-length portrait of a very young woman—­I might say a girl scarcely twenty—­in a white dress, made in a very simple old fashion, though I was too little accustomed to female costume to be able to fix the date.  It might have been a hundred years old, or twenty, for aught I knew.  The face had an expression of youth, candor, and simplicity more than any face I had ever seen,—­or so, at least in my surprise, I thought.  The eyes were a little wistful, with something which was almost anxiety which at least was not content—­in them; a faint, almost imperceptible, curve in the lids.  The complexion was of a dazzling fairness, the hair light, but the eyes dark, which gave individuality to the face.  It would have been as lovely had the eyes been blue,—­probably more so,—­but their darkness gave a touch of character, a slight discord, which made the harmony finer.  It was not, perhaps, beautiful in the highest sense of the word.  The girl must have been too young, too slight, too little developed for actual beauty; but a face which so invited love and confidence I never saw.  One smiled at it with instinctive affection.  “What a sweet face!” I said.  “What a lovely girl!  Who is she?  Is this one of the relations you were speaking of on the other side?”

My father made me no reply.  He stood aside, looking at it as if he knew it too well to require to look,—­as if the picture was already in his eyes.  “Yes,” he said, after an interval, with a long-drawn breath, “she was a lovely girl, as you say.”

“Was?—­then she is dead.  What a pity!” I said; “what a pity! so young and so sweet!”

We stood gazing at her thus, in her beautiful stillness and calm,—­two men, the younger of us full-grown and conscious of many experiences, the other an old man,—­before this impersonation of tender youth.  At length he said, with a slight tremulousness in his voice, “Does nothing suggest to you who she is, Phil?”

I turned round to look at him with profound astonishment, but he turned away from my look.  A sort of quiver passed over his face.  “That is your mother,” he said, and walked suddenly away, leaving me there.