Chapter 50 - Page 2

than it shamed me. Clearly his knowledge of all, as he described it, did not comprise the disgrace which I feared.

"You are almost like Mrs. Strouss to-day," he answered, with some compassion. "What way is the wind? I have often observed that when one female shows asperity, nearly all the others do the same. The weather affects them more than men, because they know nothing about it. But to come back--are you prepared to hear what I have got to tell you?"

I bowed without saying another word. For he should be almost the last of mankind to give a lecture upon irritation.

"Very well; you wish me to go on. Perceiving how sadly you were upset by the result of those interviews, first with Handkin, and then with Goad, after leaving you here I drove at once to the office, studio, place of business, or whatever you please to call it, of the famous fellow in the portrait line, whose anagram, private mark, or whatever it is, was burned into the back of the ivory. Handkin told me the fellow was dead, or, of course, his work would be worth nothing; but the name was carried on, and the register kept, at a little place somewhere in Soho, where, on the strength of his old repute, they keep up a small trade with inferior hands. I gave them a handsome order for a thing that will never be handsome, I fear--my old battered physiognomy. And then I produced the locket which in some queer state of mind you had given me, and made them hunt out their old books, and at last discovered the very entry. But to verify it I must go to Paris, where his son is living."

"Whose son? Lord Castlewood's?"

"Erema, have you taken leave of your senses? What son has Lord Castlewood? The artist's son, to be sure; the son of the man who did the likeness. Is it the vellum and the stuff upon it that has so upset your mind? I am glad that you showed it to me, because it would have been mean to do otherwise. But show it to no one else, my dear, except your cousin, Lord Castlewood. He has the first right of all to know it, though he will laugh at it as I do. Trumpery of that sort! Let them produce a certified copy of a register. If they could do that, need they ever have shot that raffish old lord--I beg pardon, my dear--your highly respected grandfather? No, no; don't tell me. Nicholas Hockin was never in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep your pluck up."

"I never can thank you enough," I replied, "for such inspiriting counsel. I have been rather miserable all this day. And I have had such a letter from America!"

Without my intending any offer of the kind, or having such idea at the furthest tip of any radius of mind, I found myself under a weight about the waist, like the things the young girls put on now. And this was the arm of the Major, which had been knocked about in some actions, but was useful still to let