"It is," I said, "your very image. Is the portrait of your husband--if that is your husband hanging there----"
She interrupted me with a shudder. "Hanging there, sir?"
"I mean on the wall. It is a picture of Mr. Lemon, I presume."
"Yes, sir, it's him."
"Is it as faithful a portrait as your own?"
"It's as like him, sir, as two peas. Egscept----" but she suddenly paused.
"Except what, Fanny?"
"Nothing, sir, nothing," she said hurriedly.
If, thought I, it is as like him as two peas, there must be something extraordinarily strange and odd in Mr. Lemon. That he was not a good-looking man could be borne with; but that, of his own free will, he should have submitted to be painted and exhibited with such a sly, sinister expression on his face, was decidedly not in his favour. With his thought in my mind I turned involuntarily to the evil-looking bird in the glass case, and, singularly enough, was struck by an absurd and fearful resemblance between the bird's beak and the man's face. Mrs. Lemon's eyes followed mine.
"Have you had that bird long?" I asked.