But—what is this?
Something that makes the blood rush back upon his heart with suffocating force, his eyes to start with horror, and a clammy moisture to ooze from every pore.
It is the face of a beautiful woman of perhaps thirty-five years.
Dark, abundant hair crowned the small, shapely head set most gracefully upon a pair of sloping shoulders.
Grave, sad eyes looked up at the horror-stricken face with an expression which strangely moved the strong man.
A straight, delicate nose and a mouth sweet and gentle in expression, but deeply lined with suffering, completed the picture. Underneath, and traced in the same delicate chirography which the letters bore, were the words:
“Mother, to her dear boy.”
With trembling hands Sumner Dalton laid it down and took up the other picture, and gazed as if fascinated upon it. It was the same face, only evidently taken fifteen or twenty years previous.
It was a magic face, one of bewildering, entrancing beauty, and full of mirth and careless glee.
Rippling curls that caught the sunlight with every breath; dancing eyes of loveliest expression; the same straight, delicate nose as seen in the other likeness, and a sweet mouth, whose bright and careless smile told of not a care in all the world. This was the picture that held Sumner Dalton spellbound with a strange horror.