"It is marvellous, notwithstanding, that my uncle should have consented," observed my companion, musing. "He told me, indeed, that I should be a great nuisance in the house this month, while his friends were down here shooting; but that he should have entered into an arrangement which gives me pleasure as well as gets rid of me, that seems so very strange."
"He has doubtless some base motive," returned I smiling: "let us console ourselves with that reflection. But what have we here? Water-colour paintings! Why have you never told me you were an artist?"
"I merely amuse myself with the paint-brush. I have had no lessons, of course, so that my perspective is quite Chinese."
"Nay, but I recognize almost all these scenes!"
"Well, you know, I have been nowhere else but at Fairburn, so that it is from thence I must take my subjects. The one you have there is taken from the bend in the stream beyond the Heronry."
"It is admirable," said I; and indeed it was so like the scene of my dream, that it gave me a shudder.
"Would you like to have it," replied Marmaduke carelessly. "You may take any that the portfolio contains. I only wish they were more worth your acceptance."
"Thank you," said I nervously. "I will certainly take this one, then;" and I rolled the sketch tightly up, and placed it in my pocket. "But here is a pretty face! Why, Master Marmaduke, you have your secrets, I see; you have never mentioned to me this young lady. What beautiful hair! The eyes, too, how glorious, and yet how tender! It is surely not the lady whom we just met in the ar—"
"Silence, sir!" cried Marmaduke, in a voice of thunder. His face was lurid with rage, and for the first time I remarked upon his forehead a faint reflection of the horse-shoe that made so terrible the brow of his uncle. "Do not speak of that wretched woman in the same breath with, with—" He did not complete the sentence, but added in his usual soft musical tones: "Pardon me, my friend; I am sorry to have been so hasty; but that picture is the portrait of my mother."
"It was stupid in me not to have known that at once," said I. "The likeness is most remarkable."