these slanderous rumours, she wished all the work which represented her to be destroyed, and her husband led her to believe that this was done; but on succeeding to the title, and coming to live at Rivenoak, Sir Quentin confessed that he had not been able to destroy that marble bust which was his joy and his pride; he undertook, however, to keep it hidden under lock and key, and only this day, this very day, had it come forth again into the light.

“I am an old, old woman,” she said, not without genuine pathos in her utterance.  “I have long outlived the few who were my enemies and spoke ill of me, as well as those who knew the truth and held me in respect.  I fear no one.  I wanted to see how I looked when I was a girl, and I confess I am glad for others to see it, too.”

Dymchurch murmured that nothing could be more natural.

“I was almost as good-looking as May, don’t you think?” she asked, with a not very successful affectation of diffidence.

“There is a likeness,” answered Dymchurch.  “But—­”

She interrupted his effort to describe the points of difference.

“You very much prefer the other face.  That doesn’t surprise me and you needn’t be afraid to confess it.  May is much better-tempered than I was, and she looks it.  Did I ever tell you how she is related to me?  I call her my niece, but she is really the grand-daughter of my brother, who emigrated to Canada.”

Thereupon Lady Ogram sketched a portrait of that brother, depicting him as a fine specimen of the colonising Briton, breezy, sturdy, honest to the core.  She traced the history of the Canadian family, which in the direct line had now no representative but May.  Of her long search for the Tomalins she did not think it necessary to speak; but, turning hack to her own history, she told of the son she had lost, and how all her affections were now bestowed upon this young girl, who in truth had become to her as a daughter.  Then, discreetly, with no undue insistence, she made known her intention to endow May Tomalin with the greater part of her fortune.

“I have lived long enough to know that money is not happiness, but in the right hands it is a great and good thing.  I have no fear of the use May will make of it, and you can’t know what a pleasure it is to be able to give it to her, to one of my own blood, my own name, instead of leaving it to strangers, as I once feared I must.—­But,” she broke off suddenly in a changed voice, “here I keep you listening to my old tales, when you ought to be asleep.  Good-night, Lord Dymchurch!  To-morrow you must see Rivenoak.  Good-night!”