The picture was that of a man of his own age, and the hair was his hair; the eyes were his eyes; the carriage of the head was his; the nose, the lips, the chin were the very counterpart of those which he had seen in the looking-glass that morning.
The portrait might have been his own portrait, painted yesterday.
What did it all mean? Was it just a chance coincidence? Or was it more? Was it the echo of the words he had read in that letter just a year before—"Mark this, Ken, you're as like your father as two peas are like?"
He wondered whether Mr. Montague Jones noticed the strange resemblance. No, he was a short-sighted man, and he noticed nothing. He was busily engaged with his papers, and with the notes he was making in his pocket-book for the benefit of the Earl. He saw nothing, he remarked nothing. He led Fortescue on to another picture, one much damaged, and which was hanging in a bad light between the windows. Kenneth looked at it absently. He spoke about it, but spoke as if he were in a dream.
As they passed that other picture on their way back through the corridor, Kenneth stood and gazed at it again. The likeness seemed to him more striking than before.
"There is no need to look at that one," said the agent; "it isn't damaged at all."
They left the picture gallery, and went down the wide staircase. Kenneth had no excuse for remaining longer. He had obtained the information which he needed for the head office; he would be able to write to London, giving a full account of what he had seen. Why, then, should he linger? What reason could he give for doing so?
The agent was walking with him to the door, when the busy secretary came out of his den.
"Mr. Jones," he said, "the Earl would like to speak to Mr. Fortescue."
Kenneth Fortescue was not naturally a nervous man, and he was not oppressed by the grandeur of the place in which he found himself. He had moved in good society, and he was able to hold his own in whatever company he found himself. The presence of an earl was no more embarrassing to him than the presence of that earl's footman. But if ever a man showed signs of nervousness—if ever a man hung back on the threshold of a room, as if he dare not face the revelation that the next step might bring, that man was Kenneth Fortescue.