'Don't put it on to Lizzie.'
The parlourmaid ceased putting it on to Lizzie and was dumb.
'Come along, little Love,' said Wemyss, turning to Lucy and holding out his hand. 'It makes one pretty sick, doesn't it, to see that not even one's own father gets dusted.'
'Is that your father?' asked Lucy, hurrying to his side and offering no opinion about dusting.
It could have been no one else's. It was Wemyss grown very enormous, Wemyss grown very old, Wemyss displeased. The photograph had been so arranged that wherever you moved to in the room Wemyss's father watched you doing it. He had been watching Lucy from between those two windows all through her first lunch, and must, flashed through Lucy's brain, have watched Vera like that all through her last one.
'How long has he been there?' she asked, looking up into Wemyss's father's displeased eyes which looked straight back into hers.
'Been there?' repeated Wemyss, drawing her away for he wanted his coffee. 'How can I remember? Ever since I've lived here, I should think. He died five years ago. He was a wonderful old man, nearly ninety. He used to stay here a lot.'
Opposite this picture hung another, next to the door that led into the hall,—also a photograph enlarged to life-size. Lucy had noticed neither of these pictures when she came in, because the light from the windows was in her eyes. Now, turning to go out through the door led by Wemyss, she was faced by this one.
It was Vera. She knew at once; and if she hadn't she would have known the next minute, because he told her.
'Vera,' he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as it were introducing them.