In glancing over the portraits, some of them by famous masters, Hugh’s eyes were arrested by a blonde beauty in the dress of the time of Charles ii.  There was such a reality of self-willed boldness as well as something worse in her face, that, though arrested by the picture, Hugh felt ashamed of looking at it in the presence of Euphra and her maid.  The pictured woman almost put him out of countenance, and yet at the same time fascinated him.  Dragging his eyes from it, he saw that Jane had turned her back upon it, while Euphra regarded it steadily.

“Open that opposite window, Jane,” said she; “there is not light enough on this portrait.”

Jane obeyed.  While she did so, Hugh caught a glimpse of her face, and saw that the formerly rosy girl was deadly pale.  He said to Euphra: 

“Your maid seems ill, Miss Cameron.”

“Jane, what is the matter with you?”

She did not reply, but, leaning against the wall, seemed ready to faint.

“The place is close,” said her mistress.  “Go into the next room there,” —­ she pointed to a door —­ “and open the window.  You will soon be well.”

“If you please, Miss, I would rather stay with you.  This place makes me feel that strange.”

She had come but lately, and had never been over the house before.

“Nonsense!” said Miss Cameron, looking at her sharply.  “What do you mean?”

“Please, don’t be angry, Miss; but the first night e’er I slept here, I saw that very lady —­”

“Saw that lady!”

“Well, Miss, I mean, I dreamed that I saw her; and I remembered her the minute I see her up there; and she give me a turn like.  I’m all right now, Miss.”

Euphra fixed her eyes on her, and kept them fixed, till she was very nearly all wrong again.  She turned as pale as before, and began to draw her breath hard.

“You silly goose!” said Euphra, and withdrew her eyes; upon which the girl began to breathe more freely.

Hugh was making some wise remarks in his own mind on the unsteady condition of a nature in which the imagination predominates over the powers of reflection, when Euphra turned to him, and began to tell him that that was the picture of her three or four times great-grandmother, painted by Sir Peter Lely, just after she was married.

“Isn’t she fair?” said she. —­ “She turned nun at last, they say.”

“She is more fair than honest,” thought Hugh.  “It would take a great deal of nun to make her into a saint.”  But he only said, “She is more beautiful than lovely.  What was her name?”

“If you mean her maiden name, it was Halkar —­ Lady Euphrasia Halkar —­ named after me, you see.  She had foreign blood in her, of course; and, to tell the truth, there were strange stories told of her, of more sorts than one.  I know nothing of her family.  It was never heard of in England, I believe, till after the Restoration.”