‘This,’ said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the heart.
Herbert nodded. ‘The fact is, I have a print of it,’ he said.
‘A print of it?’
‘A miserable little dingy engraving.’
‘Of this?’ Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. ‘Where?’
‘That’s the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant I got home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere in the house and it will turn up all in good time. It’s the frontispiece of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together by some amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper cover—confessions, travels, trials and so on. All eighteenth century, and all in French.’
‘And mine?’ said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight.
Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost birdlike fashion across the room at his visitor.
‘Sabathier’s,’ he said.
‘Sabathier’s!’