Wealth had come, yet much of it had gone; how, no man knew but himself and one other; he had toiled hard to win it, was toiling hard at sixty to win it back. And how strenuously he toiled, again no man knew; least of all his son.
The desultory talk had drooped. Suddenly Matthew Lanyon plunged his hand in the breast pocket of his dress-coat and drew out an old-fashioned miniature, which, after regarding it for a few moments, he handed to Sylvester.
“I've been rummaging about to-day and found this. Perhaps you'd like to have it.”
“My mother!” said Sylvester.
It was a portrait, on ivory, of a singularly sweet face, possessing the tender, unearthly purity of one of Lorenzo di Credi's Madonnas, executed when the original was very young, a few months, in fact, before Sylvester was born.
“A very good likeness,” said Matthew.
“I shall be glad to keep it,” replied the son, putting it into his pocket.
“I thought you would,” assented the elder.
“It will be a companion to my miniature of Constance,” said Sylvester.
And then silence came again; for memories crowded into the minds of each that they knew not how to speak of. Yet each knew that the other was thinking of his dead wife and wished that he could burst the strange bonds of reserve that held him and speak out that which was in his heart.