haps while we are going over the house you may happen to recall some
further particulars relating to the Haygarth family."

Mr. Wendover assented. He was evidently anxious to oblige me, and
accepted my explanation of my business in perfect good faith. He
conducted me from room to room, waiting patiently while I scrutinised
the panelled walls and stared at the attenuated old furniture. I was
determined to observe George Sheldon's advice to the very letter,
though I had little hope of making any grand melodramatic discovery in
the way of documents hidden in old cabinets, or mouldering behind
sliding panels.

I asked the rector if he had ever found papers of any kind in forgotten
nooks and corners of the house or the furniture. His reply was a
decided negative. He had explored and investigated every inch of the
old dwelling-place, and had found nothing.

So much for Sheldon's idea.

Mr. Wendover led me from basement to garret, encountering bouncing
daughters and boys in brown holland wherever we went; and from basement
to garret I found that all was barren. In the whole of the house there
was but one object which arrested my attention, and the interest which
that one object aroused in my mind had no relation to the Haygarthian
fortune.

Over a high carved chimney-piece in one of the bedchambers there hung a
little row of miniatures--old-fashioned oval miniatures, pale and
faded--pictures of men and women with the powdered hair of the Georgian
period, and the flowing full-bottomed wigs familiar to St. James's and
Tunbridge-wells in the days of inoffensive Anne. There were in all
seven miniatures, six of which specimens of antique portraiture were
prim and starched and artificial of aspect. But the seventh was
different in form and style: it was the picture of a girlish face
looking out of a frame of loose unpowdered locks; a bright innocent
face, with gray eyes and marked black eyebrows, pouting lips a little
parted, and white teeth gleaming between lips of rosy red; such a face
as one might fancy the inspiration of an old poet. I took the miniature
gently from the little brass hook on which it hung, and stood for some
time looking at the bright frank face.

It was the picture of Charlotte Halliday. Yes; I suppose there is a
fatality in these things. It was one of those marvellous accidental
resemblances which every man has met with in the course of his life.
Here was this dead-and-gone beauty of the days of George t