But it was to Barney Dale that Clem paid the most assiduous court, so contriving matters as to occupy the seat next his, and to engage him in talk about such subjects as the old man was likely to take an interest in. He soon found that under a somewhat crabbed and forbidding exterior, Barney hid a personality at once quaint and kindly, and, in some respects, of an almost childlike simplicity. On more than one occasion, as they sat side by side, Clem tried to bring the conversation round to Broome and its mistress; but Barney became at once so stolidly dull, and was so evidently disinclined to touch on the subject in any way, that, for fear of rendering him suspicious as to his ulterior motives, he felt it best to lead back the talk into other and less personal channels.
It was Clem's object to take the old man unawares, in the hope that, in the first moment of surprise, he might unwittingly let fall some exclamation or remark which would help to indicate the direction in which his next step should be taken.
On a certain evening, after he had been about a week at the "Chequers," Clem was lounging purposely at the door when Barney, with the help of his stout blackthorn, came limping slowly up. After greetings had passed, Clem said:
"Just come into this room for a moment, Mr. Dale. I have something I want to show you."
With that he opened the door of a side room, and, Barney followed him in. Having shut the door and turned up the gas, Clem took from the table a "tinted" cabinet-size photograph, and placed it in the old man's hands. It was Hermia's portrait, which he had that morning received from an Ashdown photographer. In it she was represented in a short-waisted white robe, a blue sash, and a grey, broad-brimmed hat with a feather of the same color; while, under her lover's directions, her chestnut locks had been arranged after a fashion to which they had never had to submit before, and in all probability never would again.
"Put on your glasses, Mr. Dale," said Clem, "and look at this, and tell me whether you recognize it as the likeness of anyone you have ever seen or known."
Putting down the photograph for a moment till he had got his spectacles astride his nose, Barney took it up again, and moving closer under the gaslight, brought his eyes to bear upon it. After staring at it for a full half-minute, his hands began to tremble, and he turned on Clem a face that was working with suppressed emotion.
"Whose likeness is this?" he demanded, hoarsely.
"Do you not recognize it as a photograph of a certain picture in the gallery at Broome, with which you are doubtless well acquainted?"
Again the old man turned his gaze on the portrait. "Aye, aye, to be sure, I know it now," he said; and yet there was an echo of doubt in his tone. "It's a likeness of Miss Elinor Pengarvon, who lived eighty or ninety years syne, and was engaged to Lord Doverley, but died a week afore her wedding-day. I mind me of the picture well. But--but how did you come by it?" he added glowering at the other with eyes which had suddenly become charged with a sort of fierce suspicion.