"Ah, Toto!" cried Eloise.
I had seized her arm, I suppose roughly in my agitation, for the picture before which Gretel had halted filled me with a sensation I can scarcely describe. Terror!—yes, it was terror, but something else as well. The feeling I had experienced in the carriage, the feeling—"I have been here before"—held my heart.
It was the picture of a girl in the garb of many, oh, many years ago; yet I knew her; and out of the past, far out of the past, came that mysterious terror that filled my soul.
But for a moment this lasted, and then faded away, and things became commonplace once more; and Gretel was Gretel, the picture a picture, and in my hand lay the warm and charming hand of Eloise, which I had taken again.
"That is the picture of Margaret von Lichtenberg," said Gretel, looking at me as she spoke.
"How like she is to little Carl!" murmured Eloise. "Gretel, how like she is to little Carl!"
"And this," said Gretel, holding the lamp to a small canvas under the large one, "is a picture of an ancestor of yours, little boy, Philippe de Saluce. He loved her, but it was many years ago. Eloise, come closer; see, who is this little picture like?"
"Why, it is Toto!" cried Eloise, clapping her hands. "Toto, look!"
I looked. It was the picture of a boy, a picture of the Marquis Philippe de Saluce, taken when he was quite young.
I looked, but the thing made little impression upon me. Few people can recognise their likeness in another.