But the old man's step was firmer now as he trod the gallery floor, head erect and shoulders set as he passed between rows of smiling or frowning ancestors, followed by a lean, dark-browed boy, whose head was a trifle bent and his eyes deprecating as they met the fixed stare of painted ones around.
Was it his fault that the scutcheon they left so fair was stained and blotted by a foul and treacherous deed?
The setting sun sent a flare of light through the great window, with its blazonment of arms and rich colouring, at the end of the gallery. It shone strangely on the dusty curtain which hung there over the last picture on the wall.
Force himself though he would, Sir Henry's hand trembled as he drew back the velvet folds.
And Michael, looking, saw the picture of a young man, dressed in the extravagant fashion of a period twenty years earlier. Rich setting to rich beauty.
Stephen Berrington, aged twenty-two, was a son any mother might have been proud of.
Surely it was no traitor's face, but rather that of a very pretty gentleman. Weak? Yes; chin and mouth proved that—a youth to be led rather than born to rule. And Satan had led him to his own destruction. So Sir Henry said, even whilst Stephen's mother wept for her son on her knees. A woman puts love before honour where a brave man makes the latter his deity.
Thus Michael looked on his father's face and found scorn overcoming the pity.
A traitor—and his father!
No wonder Morice Conyers had mocked him. Yet he would prove that a man can be a traitor's son, and yet no traitor himself. The blood drummed in his head and through his pulses at the thought.