assed the painting which hung then in Rudolph Musgrave's study,--the
portrait of the young Gerald Musgrave, afterward the friend of Jefferson
and Henry, and, still later, the author of divers bulky tomes,
pertaining for the most part to ethnology. The boy smiles at you from
the canvas, smiles ambiguously,--smiles with a woman's mouth, set above
a resolute chin, however,--and with a sort of humorous sadness in his
eyes. These latter are of a dark shade of blue--purple, if you
will,--and his hair is tinged with red.

"Why, he took after me!" said Miss Stapylton. "How thoughtful of him,
Olaf!"

And Rudolph Musgrave saw the undeniable resemblance. It gave him a queer
sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the
faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood,--the same blood
which at this thought quickened. For any person guided by appearances,
Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein in
question contained celestial ichor or some yet diviner fluid.

"It is true," he conceded, "that there is a certain likeness."

"And he is a very beautiful boy," said Miss Stapylton, demurely. "Thank
you, Olaf; I begin to think you are a dangerous flatterer. But he is
only a boy, Olaf! And I had always thought of Gerald Musgrave as a
learned person with a fringe of whiskers all around his face--like a
centerpiece, you know."

The colonel smiled. "This portrait was painted early in life. Our
kinsman was at that time, I believe, a person of rather frivolous
tendencies. Yet he was not quite thirty when he first established his
reputation by his monograph upon _The Evolution of Marriage_. And
afterwards, just prior to his first meeting with Goethe, you will
remember--"

"Oh, yes!" Miss Stapylton assented, hastily; "I remember perfectly. I
know all about him, thank you. And it was that beautiful boy, Olaf, that
young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote musty
old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never
married or had any fun at all! How _horrid_, Olaf!" she cried, with a
queer shrug of distaste.

"I fail," said Colonel Musgrave, "to perceive anything--ah--horrid in a
life devoted to the study of anthropology. His reputation when he died
was international."

"But he never had any fun, you jay-bird! And, oh, Olaf! Olaf! that boy
could have had so much fun! The world held so much for him! Why, Fortune
is only a woman, you know, and what woman c