Percival reclaimed the photograph: "Here, Sissy, what do you say? Should you like him for your album?"
"For my album? A man I never saw! Who is he?" Miss Langton inquired. "Oh, he's very handsome, though, isn't he?"
Percival saw his grandfather was looking. "It's Mr. Lisle's son," he said.
"And very handsome? Doesn't take after his father."
(Mr. Lisle had been Percival's guardian for the few months between his father's death and his majority. It had been a great grief to Mr. Thorne. Something which he said to his grandson when he first came to Brackenhill had been met by the rejoinder, very cool though perfectly respectful in tone, "But, sir, if Mr. Lisle does not disapprove—" The power-loving old man could not pardon Mr. Lisle for having an authority over Percival which should have belonged to him.)
He put on his spectacles to look at the photograph which Sissy brought. It was impossible to deny the beauty of the face, though the style was rather effeminate: the features were almost faultless.
"Is it like him?" said Sissy, looking up at young Thorne.
"Very like," he replied: "it doesn't flatter him at all, if that is what you mean: does it, Hammond?"
"Not at all."
"He used to sing in the choir of their church," Percival went on. "They photographed him once in his surplice—a sort of ideal chorister. All the old ladies went into raptures, and said he looked like an angel."