“I still fail to see,” I murmured, looking at her comically.

“Oh, Uncle Seymour,” Dolly cried.  “How blind you men are!  If Aunt Amelia knew she would never forgive me.  Why, you must understand.  The—­the rouge, you know, and the pearl powder!”

“Oh, it comes out, then, in the photograph?” I inquired.

“Comes out!  I should think so!  It’s like little black spots all over auntie’s face. such a guy as she looks in it!”

“And Colonel Clay is in them too?”

“Yes; I took them when he and auntie were talking together, without either of them noticing.  And Bertie developed them.  I’ve three of David Granton.  Three beauties; most successful.”

“Any other character?” I asked, seeing business ahead.

Dolly hung back, still redder.  “Well, the rest are with Aunt Isabel,” she answered, after a struggle.

“My dear child,” I replied, hiding my feelings as a husband, “I will be brave.  I will bear up even against that last misfortune!”

Dolly looked up at me pleadingly.  “It was here in London,” she went on; “—­when I was last with auntie.  Medhurst was stopping in the house at the time; and I took him twice, tête-à-tête with Aunt Isabel!”

“Isabel does not paint,” I murmured, stoutly.

Dolly hung back again.  “No, but—­her hair!” she suggested, in a faint voice.

“Its colour,” I admitted, “is in places assisted by a—­well, you know, a restorer.”

Dolly broke into a mischievous sly smile.  “Yes, it is,” she continued.  “And, oh, Uncle Sey, where the restorer has—­er—­restored it, you know, it comes out in the photograph with a sort of brilliant iridescent metallic sheen on it!”

“Bring them down, my dear,” I said, gently patting her head with my hand.  In the interests of justice, I thought it best not to frighten her.

Dolly brought them down.  They seemed to me poor things, yet well worth trying.  We found it possible, on further confabulation, by the simple aid of a pair of scissors, so to cut each in two that all trace of Amelia and Isabel was obliterated.  Even so, however, I judged it best to call Charles and Dr. Beddersley to a private consultation in the library with Dolly, and not to submit the mutilated photographs to public inspection by their joint subjects.  Here, in fact, we had five patchy portraits of the redoubtable Colonel, taken at various angles, and in characteristic unstudied attitudes.  A child had outwitted the cleverest sharper in Europe!

The moment Beddersley’s eye fell upon them, a curious look came over his face.  “Why, these,” he said, “are taken on Herbert Winslow’s method, Miss Lingfield.”

“Yes,” Dolly admitted timidly.  “They are.  He’s—­a friend of mine, don’t you know; and—­he gave me some plates that just fitted my camera.”

Beddersley gazed at them steadily.  Then he turned to Charles.  “And this young lady,” he said, “has quite unintentionally and unconsciously succeeded in tracking Colonel Clay to earth at last.  They are genuine photographs of the man—­as he is—­without the disguises!”