“Crystal? why, that is her name, too. I have heard Miss Trafford use it a dozen times. As though there could be two faces like that”—pointing to the canvas. “She looks younger, yes, and happier, in the picture; but then, of course, one has never seen her smiling like that. But it is Miss Davenport—ay, and to the life too.”
“You must be mistaken,” observed Mr. Ferrers in a voice so agitated that Erle regarded him with astonishment. He was strangely pale, and the hand that was grasping the chair back was visibly trembling. “That is the portrait of our young cousin, Crystal Ferrers.”
“Yes, our adopted child,” added Miss Ferrers, “who left our home nearly eighteen months ago.”
Erle looked more puzzled than ever. “I can not understand it,” he said, in a most perplexed voice. “If she be your cousin, Crystal Ferrers, why does she call herself Crystal Davenport? There can be no question of identity; that is the face of the Miss Davenport I know—the young governess who lives with the Traffords; that is the very ring she wears, too”—with another quick glance at the hand that was holding a sheaf of white lilies. But here Mr. Ferrers interrupted him.
“Will you describe that ring, Mr. Huntingdon?”
“Willingly—it is of Indian workmanship, I fancy, and has a curiously wrought gold setting, with an emerald very deeply sunk into the center.”
“Yes, yes; it must be she,” murmured Raby, and then for the moment he seemed able to say no more; only Margaret watched him, with tears in her eyes.
Erle’s interest and curiosity were strongly excited. There must be some strange mystery at the bottom of this he thought. He had always been sure that Miss Davenport had some history. She was wonderfully handsome; but with all his predilection for pretty faces he had never quite taken to her; he had regarded her with involuntary distrust.
He looked at Mr. Ferrers as he stood evidently absorbed in thought. What a grand-looking man he was, he said to himself, if he would only hold his head up, and push back the mass of dull brown hair that lay so heavily on his forehead.
There was something sad in that spectacle of sightless strength; and to those who first saw him, Raby Ferrers always seemed like some patient giant oppressed and bowed down, both physically and mentally, but grand in a certain sublime resignation that endured because he was too proud to complain.