He led her to the window, and drew from beneath his vest, a miniature, which he held toward the fading light.
"Do you trace the features?" he whispered.
"I do. It is beautifully painted, and the likeness resembles a thousand others, that I have seen of the same man. But what has this portrait in miniature to do with us?"
"What has it to do with us? Regard it again, and closely, my sister. Do you not trace a resemblance?"
"Resemblance to whom?" Esther echoed. "Why it is the portrait of —— ——."
She repeated a name familiar to the civilized world.
"It is his portrait. No one can deny it. But Esther, again I ask you,—" his voice sunk low and lower.—"Do you not trace a resemblance?"
"Resemblance to whom?" she answered, her tone indicating bewildered amazement.
"To the picture of our Mother, which you have seen at Hill Royal," was Randolph's answer.
Utterly bewildered, Esther once more examined the miniature; and an idea, so strange, so wild that she deemed it but the idle fancy of a dream, began to take shape in her brain.