The blood had rushed into Maud’s face, covering it with a rich tell-tale mantle, when her companion first alluded to the half-finished miniature he held in his hand; then her features resembled ivory, as the revulsion of feeling, that overcame her confusion, followed.  For some little time she sate, in breathless stillness, with her looks cast upon the floor, conscious that Robert Willoughby was glancing from her own face to the miniature, and from the miniature to her face again, making his observations and comparisons.  Then she ventured to raise her eyes timidly towards his, half-imploringly, as if to beseech him to proceed to something else.  But the young man was too much engrossed with the exceedingly pretty sketch he held in his hand, to understand her meaning, or to comply with her wishes.

“This is yourself, Maud!” he cried—­“though in a strange sort of dress—­why have you spoilt so beautiful a thing, by putting it in this masquerade?”

“It is not myself—­it is a copy of—­a miniature I possess.”

“A miniature you possess!—­Of whom can you possess so lovely a miniature, and I never see it?”

A faint smile illumined the countenance of Maud, and the blood began to return to her cheeks.  She stretched her hand over to the sketch, and gazed on it, with intense feeling, until the tears began to stream from her eyes.

“Maud—­dear, dearest Maud—­have I said that which pains you?—­I do not understand all this, but I confess there are secrets to which I can have no claim to be admitted—­”

“Nay, Bob, this is making too much of what, after all, must sooner or later be spoken of openly among us.  I believe that to be a copy of a miniature of my mother.”

“Of mother, Maud—­you are beside yourself—­it has neither her features, expression, nor the colour of her eyes.  It is the picture of a far handsomer woman, though mother is still pretty; and it is perfection!”

“I mean of my mother—­of Maud Yeardley; the wife of my father, Major Meredith.”

This was said with a steadiness that surprised our heroine herself, when she came to think over all that had passed, and it brought the blood to her companion’s heart, in a torrent.

“This is strange!” exclaimed Willoughby, after a short pause.  “And my mother—­our mother has given you the original, and told you this?  I did not believe she could muster the resolution necessary to such an act.”

“She has not.  You know, Bob, I am now of age; and my father, a month since, put some papers in my hand, with a request that I would read them.  They contain a marriage settlement and other things of that sort, which show I am mistress of more money than I should know what to do with, if it were not for dear little Evert—­but, with such a precious being to love, one never can have too much of anything.  With the papers were many trinkets, which I suppose father never looked at.  This beautiful miniature was among the last; and I feel certain, from some remarks I ventured to make, mother does not know of its existence.”