"One—a daughter. I think you have met her."
"There were two. I was the other."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Mr. Brandon in the same languid tones; but, for the first time, it seemed to Dick that they faltered.
"I am quite sure. You would know her writing."
"Possibly. It was a great while ago, and my eyes are not as good as they were."
"You would recognize her portrait?"
"If one I had seen before, I might."
"I should say this was a portrait of the first Mrs. Brandon," he said, taking that which Dick handed him and, looking at it, not without some signs of embarrassment, "or of someone very like her. And this is not unlike her writing, as I remember it. Oh! you wish me to read this?"
Dick signed assent, watching him while he read. Whatever Mr. Brandon felt while reading that letter, he kept it all in his own heart.
"This is all?" he asked when he had read and deliberately refolded it.