about that yellowed strip of paper that
nothing could upset, and the date of Martin's birth given in the
straggling hand at the bottom coincided exactly with his own
information. He sat down again in the cold with his elbows on the table
and his head between his hands while he took in some of the corollaries
of the position. If the old Lord Blandamer had married Sophia Flannery
on March 15, 1800, then his second marriage was no marriage at all, for
Sophia was living long after that, and there had been no divorce. But
if his second marriage was no marriage, then his son, Lord Blandamer,
who was drowned in Cullerne Bay, had been illegitimate, and his
grandson, Lord Blandamer, who now sat on the throne of Fording, was
illegitimate too. And Martin's dream had been true. Selfish,
thriftless, idle Martin, whom the boys called "Old Nebuly," had not been
mad after all, but had been Lord Blandamer.

It all hung on this strip of paper, this bolt fallen from the blue, this
message that had come from no one knew where. Whence _had_ it come?
Could Miss Joliffe have dropped it? No, that was impossible; she would
certainly have told him if she had any information of this kind, for she
knew that he had been trying for months to unravel the tangle of
Martin's papers. It must have been hidden behind the picture, and have
fallen out when the bottom piece of the frame fell.

He went to the picture. There was the vase of flaunting, ill-drawn
flowers, there was the green caterpillar wriggling on the table-top, but
at the bottom was something that he had never seen before. A long
narrow margin of another painting was now visible where the frame was
broken away; it seemed as if the flower-piece had been painted over some
other subject, as if Sophia Flannery had not even been at the pains to
take the canvas out, and had only carried her daub up to the edge of the
frame. There was no question that the flowers masked some better
painting, some portrait, no doubt, for enough was shown at the bottom to
enable him to make out a strip of a brown velvet coat, and even one
mother-of-pearl button of a brown velvet waistcoat. He stared at the
flowers, he held a candle close to them in the hope of being able to
trace some outline, to discover something of what lay behind. But the
colour had been laid on with no sparing hand, the veil was impenetrable.
Even the green caterpillar seemed to mock him, for as he looked at it
closely, he saw that