"Really?" I asked, with a little gratified surprise.
"Indeed, yes!" he replied earnestly. "And Mrs. Walker told me something that I had not in the least thought to surmise—that you are a descendant of the famous artist, Christie. I don't know why I happened not to think about it, for the name is one which an Englishman instantly connects with portrait galleries. He was very favorably known on our side."
"Yes. He had a very remarkable—a very pathetic history," I said.
Turning around, he glanced at a small portrait across the room.
"Is—is this James Christie?" he asked.
"Yes. There is a larger one in the hall."
He walked across the room and examined the portrait. After a perfunctory survey, which did not include any very close examination of the strong features—rugged and a little harsh, and by no means the glorious young face which had been a lodestar to Lady Frances Webb—he turned back to me. For a moment I fancied that he was going to say something bitter and impulsive—something that held a tinge of mass-hatred for class, but his expression changed suddenly. I saw that his impulse had passed, and that what he would say next would be an afterthought.
"Do you care for him—for this sort of thing?" he asked, waving his hand carelessly toward the other portraits in the room and toward the sword, lying there in an absurd sort of harmlessness beneath its glass case. "I imagined that you didn't."
He spoke with a tinge of disappointment. Evidently he was sorry to find me so pedigreed a person.
"I do—and I don't," I answered, coming across the room to his side and drawing back a curtain to admit a better light. "I certainly care for—him."