gazing at young Rainer with an equal intensity of attention.  The likeness between the two men—­perhaps increased by the fact that the hooded lamps on the table left the figure behind the chair in shadow—­ struck Faxon the more because of the strange contrast in their expression.  John Lavington, during his nephew’s blundering attempt to drop the wax and apply the seal, continued to fasten on him a look of half-amused affection; while the man behind the chair, so oddly reduplicating the lines of his features and figure, turned on the boy a face of pale hostility.

The impression was so startling Faxon forgot what was going on about him.  He was just dimly aware of young Rainer’s exclaiming:  “Your turn, Mr. Grisben!” of Mr. Grisben’s ceremoniously protesting:  “No—­no; Mr. Faxon first,” and of the pen’s being thereupon transferred to his own hand.  He received it with a deadly sense of being unable to move, or even to understand what was expected of him, till he became conscious of Mr. Grisben’s paternally pointing out the precise spot on which he was to leave his autograph.  The effort to fix his attention and steady his hand prolonged the process of signing, and when he stood up—­a strange weight of fatigue on all his limbs—­the figure behind Mr. Lavington’s chair was gone.

Faxon felt an immediate sense of relief.  It was puzzling that the man’s exit should have been so rapid and noiseless, but the door behind Mr. Lavington was screened by a tapestry hanging, and Faxon concluded that the unknown looker-on had merely had to raise it to pass out.  At any rate, he was gone, and with his withdrawal the strange weight was lifted.  Young Rainer was lighting a cigarette, Mr. Balch meticulously inscribing his name at the foot of the document, Mr. Lavington—­his eyes no longer on his nephew—­ examining a strange white-winged orchid in the vase at his elbow.  Everything suddenly seemed to have grown natural and simple again, and Faxon found himself responding with a smile to the affable gesture with which his host declared:  “And now, Mr. Faxon, we’ll dine.”

III

“I wonder how I blundered into the wrong room just now; I thought you told me to take the second door to the left,” Faxon said to Frank Rainer as they followed the older men down the gallery.

“So I did; but I probably forgot to tell you which staircase to take.  Coming from your bedroom, I ought to have said the fourth door to the right.  It’s a puzzling house, because my uncle keeps adding to it from year to year.  He built this room last summer for his modern pictures.”

Young Rainer, pausing to open another door, touched an electric button which sent a circle of light about the walls of a long room hung with canvases of the French impressionist school.

Faxon advanced, attracted by a shimmering Monet, but Rainer laid a hand on his arm.

“He bought that last week for a thundering price.  But come along—­ I’ll show you all this after dinner.  Or he will rather—­he loves it.”