“So they stone me, sir, an’ call me ‘witch’!”
“Aye,” he sighed, “because the vulgar cannot love anything different to themselves.... And you knew my father?”
“In a better day, long an’ long ago!” she answered, lifting her head proudly and holding his regard with her strangely bright old eyes. “He was a great and noble gentleman!” So saying, she rose suddenly, and, drawing a small key from her bosom, opened a drawer and took thence two miniatures, one of which she studied awhile with bowed head ere she handed it to Sir John; it was a thing of exquisite artistry, set within a gold frame; the picture of a manly face, square-chinned, firm-lipped, but with eyes soft and tender as a woman’s.
“I never saw this picture of my father, Penelope.”
“Nobody has!” she answered. And now she gave him the other picture, whose gold, strangely cut and battered, framed a face of extraordinary beauty—black-haired, deep-eyed, low-browed, full and vivid of mouth—the face of a girl passionate with life and eager youth, yet dominated by an expression of resolute strength and courage.
“Why, Penelope!” said he in awed voice—“O Penelope, this—this was yourself!”
“Aye, that was me,” she answered; “’twas ’ow I looked long ago ... when the world was younger an’ kinder.”
“And why is the case so battered? See, the gold is cut quite through in one place!”
“Aye, so it be!” said old Penelope very softly, and stood with the miniature in her hand, turning it over and over in her bony fingers and on her face a light that was not wholly of the sun. Then, with a sudden gesture, she turned and locked the portraits away.
“Hark!” said she; “d’ye hear aught?” From somewhere beneath arose a fearsome puffing and blowing, accompanied by a ceaseless splashing. “That be Jarge Potter a-washin’ hisself!” she explained. “Which do mean as him an’ Sir Hector will be wantin’ their hot grog; they never fancies tea.”