'Heaps, miss. He's always having them taken. I think it's something to do with his profession.'
I went to the drawer, and took out a pile. The first she looked at she gave a start. She put her lips together, and a hard look came on her face. She looked older, and not so beautiful as she sat staring at my James's portrait, as if she was looking at a ghost. It was quite a minute before she spoke; and then it was to herself rather than to me.
'It's he. I wonder what it all means.'
The way she'd changed made me half-afraid of her; but I plucked up courage to put a question which was slipping, as it were, off the tip of my tongue.
'Begging your pardon, miss, but--do you know my James?'
'Once I knew him very well. He was--he was a friend of my family.'
My heart gave a jump against my ribs.
'Then he was a gentleman? I always knew he was a gentleman! That makes it all the more wonderful that he should ever have married me.'
Her lips twisted themselves up in a way I didn't like.
'There was nothing wonderful in that. You might have married any one you liked, if you had known how to play your cards, my dear.' She kept looking at the likenesses, one after the other. 'He makes a good photograph; he comes out well in all of them. And in appearance, he doesn't seem to have materially changed.'