A middle-aged footman in the sober Wornock livery came at the sound of the bell, the St. Bernard watching the visitor with grave but friendly eyes, and evidently perfectly aware of his respectability.
Mrs. Wornock was at home. A slow and solemn butler now appeared upon the scene, and led the way to a corridor which opened out of the hall; and at the end of this corridor, like Vandyke's famous portrait of Charles the First at Warwick Castle, the full-length portrait of a young man in a hunting-coat looked Allan Carew in the face.
In spite of all he had been told about his likeness to the owner of Discombe, the sight of that frank young face looking at him under the bright white light fairly startled him. For the moment it seemed to him as if he had seen his own reflection in a cheval-glass; but as he drew nearer the canvas the likeness lessened, the difference in the features came out, and he saw that the resemblance was less a likeness than a reminiscence. Distance was needed to make the illusion, and he could understand now why his new friends of the hunting-field should have taken him for Wornock on that first morning when he rode up to them as a stranger.
The portrait was by Millais, painted with as much brio and vigour as the better-known picture of the young Marchioness of Huntley. Mr. Wornock was standing in an old stone doorway, leaning in an easy attitude against the deep arch of the door, hunting-crop, cigar-case, and hat on a table in the background, standing where he had stood on many a winter morning, waiting for his horse.
There was a skylight over this end of the corridor, and the portrait of the master of the house shone out brilliantly under the clear top-light.
The butler stopped within a few paces of the portrait, opened a low, old-fashioned door, and ushered Mr. Carew into a spacious room, at the further end of which a lady was sitting by an open window, beyond which he saw the long vista of an Italian garden, a cypress avenue, where statues were gleaming here and there in the sunshine. There was a grand piano on one side of the room, an organ on the other; books filled every recess. This spacious apartment was evidently music-room and library rather than drawing-room, and here, amidst books and music, lived the lonely lady of the house.
She came to meet him with a friendly smile as he advanced into the room, holding out her hand.
"It was very good of you to come so soon," she said, in her low, musical voice. "I wanted so much to see you—to know you. Yes, you are very like him. One of those accidental likenesses which are so common, and yet seem so strange. My husband had a friend who was murdered because he was like Sir Robert Peel; but my son is not a public man, and he has no enemies. You will run no risks on account of your likeness to him.
"I am grateful to the likeness which has given me the honour of knowing Mrs. Wornock," said Allan, taking the seat to which she motioned him, as she resumed her low chair by the window.
"Indeed, you have no reason. I am a very stupid person. I go nowhere, I see very few people; and the people I do see are people whom you would think unworthy of your interest."