‘Ah,’ thought Maurice, ‘these paragons are sometimes viler at bottom than your open profligate. Few men ever knew the human heart better than he who gave us Charles and Joseph Surface.’
‘I have an inward conviction that Captain Penwyn must have been nice,’ said Viola.
‘Indeed! On what is that conviction based?’
‘On various grounds. First, there are the praises of people who cannot flatter, since there is nothing to be gained by speaking well of the dead. Secondly, there is that shelf full of books with George Penwyn’s name in them, all nice books, the choice of a man of refinement and good feeling. Thirdly, there is his portrait, and I like his face. Are those reasons strong enough, do you think?’
‘Quite, for a woman! His portrait!—ah, by-the-bye, I should like to have another look at that.’
‘Come and see it at once, then,’ replied Viola, good-naturedly. ‘It is in the little study, yonder—the old Squire’s room. The books are there too.’
The study was a little room off the hall. Maurice remembered it well, though he had never entered it since Mrs. Darvis showed him George Penwyn’s portrait, on his first visit to the Manor House.
Viola took a candle from the mantelshelf and led the way to the study, a room which was still used for business interviews with stewards or tenants, a second door opening into a passage communicating with the offices, and obscure backways by which such inferior beings were admitted to the squire’s presence.
Maurice took the candle from Miss Bellingham’s hand and held it up before the picture over the mantelpiece. His grip tightened on the bronze candlestick, and his breath came stronger and quicker as he looked, but he said never a word.
That picture was to him stronger confirmation of his idea about Justina’s parentage than all the circumstantial evidence in the world. There, in those pictured lineaments he saw the very lines of Justina’s face—lines modified in her countenance, it is true, and softened to feminine beauty, but characteristics too striking to be mistaken even by a casual observer.