“No, for a certainty,” replied the captain.
“Then is it not worth five pounds?” exclaimed Janice.
“Five pounds,” laughed André, derisively. “’T is easily worth five hundred!”
“Oh, never!” cried the girl.
“Ay. Am I not right, Mobray?”
“Beyond question. And then ’t is not worth the portrait it encircles,” asserted Mobray, gallantly.
“And yet I could not get one pound for it,” marvelled Janice, and told the two officers how she had sought to barter it.
“’T is evident you asked too little, Miss Meredith,” surmised André, “and so made him suspect your title.”
“Would that you might offer it to me at a hundred times five pounds!” bemoaned the baronet. “To think of such a pearl being cast before such swine
“Who painted it, Miss Meredith?” asked André.