"I say!" Sir Victor cries. "Look here! Awkward thing of me to do, eh,
Ethel? Writing case broken too. Never mind, I'll pick 'em up."
He goes down on his knees boyishly, and begins gathering them up. Letters, envelopes, wax, seals, pens and pencils. He flings all in a heap in the broken case. Lady Catheron cooing to baby, looks smilingly on. Suddenly he comes to a full stop.
Comes to a full stop, and holds something before him as though it were a snake. A very harmless snake apparently—the photograph of a young and handsome man. For fully a minute he gazes at it utterly aghast. "Good Heaven!" his wife hears him say.
Holding baby in her arms she glances at him. The back of the picture is toward her, but she recognizes it. Her face turns ashen gray—she moves round and bends it over baby.
"Ethel!" Sir Victor says, his voice stern, "what does this mean?"
"What does what mean? Hush-h-h baby, darling. Not so loud, Victor, please. I want to get babe asleep."
"How comes Juan Catheron's picture here?"
She catches her breath—the tone, in which Sir Victor speaks, is a tone not pleasant to hear. She is a thoroughly good little thing, but the best of little things (being women) are ergo dissemblers. For a second she dares not face him; then she comes bravely up to time and looks at him over her shoulder.
"Juan Catheron! Oh, to be sure. Is that picture here yet?" with a little laugh. "I thought I had lost it centuries ago." "Good Heaven!" she exclaims inwardly; "how could I have been such a fool!"
Sir Victor rises to his feet—a curious passing likeness to his dark cousin, Inez, on his fair blonde face. "Then you know Juan Catheron. You! And you never told me."