Two or three dark old pictures hung on the walls, and there was a cabinet on which Laura laying her hand, said—
"The dear grandmother kept all her letters here."
"Indeed," Brandon answered; "it must have been very interesting to you to look them over. (And yet," he thought "you don't look as if you had found in them anything of much interest.")
"We have never opened it," said Mrs. Melcombe. "Mr. Mortimer, when he was here, proposed to look over and sort all the letters for me, but I declined his offer."
("And no doubt made him miserable by so doing") was Brandon's next thought.
"I shall keep the key for my dear boy," she continued, "and give it to him when he comes of age."
("To find out something that he will wish he didn't know.") thought Brandon again. ("That cabinet, as likely as not, contains the evidence of it, whatever it is.")
"And in this gallery outside," she proceeded, "the dear grandmother used to walk every day."
Brandon perceived that he had got to the core and heart of the place at last. His interest was so intense that he failed to conceal it. He walked to the window and noticed the pouring rain that was streaming between the rustic pillars of the balustrades into the garden below. He examined the pictures; only two of them were portraits, but in the background of one was an undoubted representation of the house itself; the other was a portrait of a beautiful boy in a blue jacket and a shirt with a wide frill laid back and open at the neck. Under his arm appeared the head of a greyish dog.
"That creature," Brandon thought, "is almost exactly like my old dog Smokey. I am very much mistaken if this is not the portrait of one of his ancestors."