“Her right to remain?” he thought; “what does she mean by that? she speaks as though conscience were involved in the thing.  No matter; let us talk of something pleasanter.”

One day she gave him a clew.  They were looking at the picture of a great statesman,—­a man as famous for the grandeur of face and form as for the power and splendor of his intellect.

“Unequalled! unapproachable!” exclaimed Surrey, at last.

“I have seen its equal,” she answered, very quietly, yet with a shiver of excitement in the tones.

“When? where? how?  I will take a journey to look at him.  Who is he? where did he grow?”

For response she put her hand into the pocket of her gown, and took out a velvet case.  What could there be in that little blue thing to cause such emotion?  As Surrey saw it in her hand, he grew hot, then cold, then fiery hot again.  In an instant by this chill, this heat, this pain, his heart was laid bare to his own inspection.  In an instant he knew that his arms would be empty did they hold a universe in which Francesca Ercildoune had no part, and that with her head on his heart the world might lapse from him unheeded; and, with this knowledge, she held tenderly and caressingly, as he saw, another man’s picture in her hand.

His own so shook that he could scarcely take the case from her, to open it; but, opened, his eyes devoured what was under them.

A half-length,—­the face and physique superb.  Of what color were the hair and eyes the neutral tints of the picture gave no hint; the brow princely, breaking the perfect oval of the face; eyes piercing and full; the features rounded, yet clearly cut; the mouth with a curious combination of sadness and disdain.  The face was not young, yet it was so instinct with magnificent vitality that even the picture impressed one more powerfully than most living men, and one involuntarily exclaimed on beholding it, “This man can never grow old, and death must here forego its claim!”

Looking up from it with no admiration to express for the face, he saw Francesca’s smiling on it with a sort of adoration, as she, reclaiming her property, said,—­

“My father’s old friends have a great deal of enjoyment, and amusement too, from his beauty.  One of them was the other day telling me of the excessive admiration people had always shown, and laughingly insisted that when papa was a young man, and appeared in public, in London or Paris, it was between two police officers to keep off the admiring crowd; and,” laughing a gay little laugh herself, “of course I believed him! why shouldn’t I?”

He was looking at the picture again.  “What an air of command he has!”

“Yes.  I remember hearing that when Daniel Webster was in London, and walked unattended through the streets, the coal-heavers and workmen took off their hats and stood bareheaded till he had gone by, thinking it was royalty that passed.  I think they would do the same for papa.”