"Photongrar. The picture, Huzoor, that the sun holds always of all things it has ever seen in the world. It showed this to a memsahiba long ago when I was little, and she showed it to my mother."
"You mean your photograph?"
"Huzoor, yes! Perhaps the queen-lady might care to see it, since it is like my mother as she was--before they found her!"
Perhaps it was the thought of what the poor woman must have been like after that finding which made the English girl feel a vague oppression as she took the tight roll of paper that Khesroo unfolded from a piece of red rag.
"I was five, Huzoor," he said simply, "and my mother loved me much."
Small wonder, was the girl's first thought as she looked at the sedate, yet childish face, half-concealed by the high turban, which had evidently been borrowed for the occasion, at the quaint dignity of the childish figure huddled into finery too large for it, and holding a flower in its hand as if it had been a sceptre. But as she looked, a startled expression came over her face; she stood up and hurried to her father, with appeal in her voice.
"Oh, father! do look here! How very curious! This photograph of Khesroo when he was a child--I think mother must have taken it, for I am almost sure there is one like it in her diary--in the volume you gave me to read the other day, because we were camping through the same country. Stay! I'll fetch it----"
She was back in a moment with an unclasped book in her hand, and fluttered hastily through pages and sketches, almost to the end.
"There!" she cried, suddenly, "I was sure of it!"
Her father laid the one photograph beside the other, and Jim Forrester, looking over his shoulder curiously, compared them also. They were identical. But underneath the one pasted into the book a woman's hand had written: