Exactly opposite the entrance rose the stairway which was the pride of the house. Its beautiful proportions, the grapes and vine leaves of its famous carvings, were lighted from beneath by the red glow of a huge open fire, and from above by the last word in electric lighting.
Ember walked straight across the hall and up the stair, and Jane followed him.
She thought she knew exactly how a puppy must feel when, blinking from the warmth and straw of his basket, he comes for the first time into the ordered solemnity of his new master’s house.
And then she looked up and saw The Portrait.
It hung on the panelling at the top of the stair where the long corridors ran off to right and left, and it took Jane’s breath away—the portrait of Lady Heritage.
Amory had painted more than a beautiful woman standing on a marble terrace: he had painted a woman Mercury. The hands held an ivory rod—diamond wings rose from the cloudy hair. Under the bright wings the eyes looked out, looked far—dark, splendid, hungry eyes.
“The earth belongs to her, and she despises it,” was Jane’s thought.
She stood staring at the portrait. Nineteen-fifteen, Henry had said—the year when other women posed with folded linen hiding their hair and the red cross worn like a blazon. She could think of several famous beauties who had been painted thus. But this woman wore her diamond wings, though, even as she wore them, Fate had done its worst to her, for Anthony Luttrell was a name with other names in a list of missing, and no man knew his grave.
A sharp clang of metal upon metal startled Jane. She looked quickly to her right, and saw that a steel gate completely barred the entrance to the corridor on that side. It had just closed behind a curious white-draped figure.
“Ah, Jeffrey,” said a voice—a deep, rather husky voice—and the figure came forward.