“Maybe you’d like to see what picture it was that made me a trespasser,” he said, with a suddenly reckless air.  “Come, child, and you shall see.  Perhaps it was the discovery that the dead was come alive that sent off two decent fellows to find a Spanish galleon without me.  There are better things than gold.  Aye, faith, the gold on a woman’s head, the light in her eye, may be worth many treasure-ships.”

We went back through the baize door through which he had come.  There was a second door within it which being opened disclosed the picture-gallery; that, being lighted from overhead, had not the gloom of the rest of the house.

I looked around me at the ruffled and periwigged gentlemen, the smiling ladies, who were my ancestors and ancestresses, with interest.

“There is a picture of my grandmother here which I am said to resemble,” I said, as I looked down the line of pictures, “though I am ashamed to say that I am thought to resemble her, seeing that she is a great beauty, and is, indeed, beautiful in her old age.  Perhaps I resemble her without possessing any of her beauty.”

“Ah, Miss Bawn,” he said, looking at me roguishly, “’handsome is as handsome does.’”

“That is so,” I said.  “My grandmother has often told me that if I am good and gentle no one will trouble about my looks.”

He turned suddenly then and he said in a singularly sweet voice—­

“Dear child! dear child!”

Then he took my hand as though I had been indeed a child and led me up to the portrait.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“I never could be like anything so beautiful,” I said, with indignation.  “If Gran looked like that she must have been beautiful indeed, and she must have looked like it.”

The young girl in the portrait was wearing a white satin gown.  She was painted in the manner of the period, with a lamb beside her which she had wreathed with roses; and she stood in a flowery meadow.  She had an armful of roses like Flora’s self, and as she stood one or two escaped and fell down her dress.  She had the long neck which has come to me, a beautiful small head, golden hair, warm fair colouring and violet eyes.

“I never could be like it,” I said again.

Captain Cardew smiled.  I saw him take the miniature from his pocket and look at it and again at the portrait as though he compared them.

“You see the likeness, do you not?” he asked.

“Yes, there is a likeness,” I acknowledged.

“I came here to feast my eyes upon it,” he said.  “I was frantic at the loss of the miniature.  I had seen this picture before, long ago, when I was a boy.  When I first saw ... the original of the miniature I remembered this and thought it the strangest coincidence.  I wanted to find out for myself if the likeness was really so strong.”

“And it was?” I asked.

“It was.  Yet you are more like the miniature than the portrait is.”