"My successor has full licence from me to displace it when his time comes to inherit, but for the present my picture will hang there."
Ashlock looked me steadily In the eyes. The distrust faded out of his face, but the perplexity remained and deepened.
"Your picture, sir?" he asked in a wondering tone, as though he would be asking what in the devil's name I needed with a picture at all.
"Yes, Mr. Ashlock," said I with a swaggering air, which I doubt not was vilely overdone, "my picture. And why not, if you please?"
"It must needs be painted first," he said.
"That is very true," I replied. "I had even thought of that myself, and so apt an occasion has presented itself, that it would be folly to disregard it. For a painter has but lately come to Keswick. My Lord Derwentwater spoke of him to me, and indeed showed me some signal evidence of his skill."
"Lord Derwentwater?" exclaimed Ashlock, In a curious change of tone. The perplexity in its turn began to die off his face, and it was succeeded by an eager curiosity. It seemed as though the name gave to him a glimmering of comprehension. Though what it was that he comprehended I could not tell.
"Yes, Lord Derwentwater told me of the man," I repeated, anxious to colour my pretext with all the plausibility of which it was capable. "Mr. Anthony Herbert——"
"Mr. Anthony Herbert?" questioned Ashlock, slowly.
"It is the painter's name," said I, and he seemed to be, as it were, savouring it in his mind. "You will not have heard it before. Mr. Herbert has painted a portrait of Lady Derwentwater," and I turned away and got me to my room, with Aron to light the way. I left Ashlock standing in the hall, and as I mounted the lower steps of the staircase, I heard him murmur to himself in a tone of reflection—