is brother moves him; it is like a touch on a musical
instrument. Perhaps I should say a native one.'

'Concerns his brother?' Mr. Adister inquired, and his look requesting
enlightenment told her she might speak.

'Adiante,' she said softly. She coloured.

Her uncle mused awhile in a half-somnolent gloom. 'He talks of this at
this present day?'

'It is not dead to him. He really appears to have hoped... he is
extraordinary. He had not heard before of her marriage. I was a witness
of the most singular scene this morning, at the piano. He gathered
it from what he had heard. He was overwhelmed by it. I could not
exaggerate. It was impossible to help being a little touched, though it
was curious, very strange.'

Her uncle's attentiveness incited her to describe the scene, and as it
visibly relieved his melancholy, she did it with a few vivid indications
of the quaint young Irishman's manner of speech. She concluded: 'At last
he begged to see a portrait of her husband.'

'Not of her?' said Mr. Adister abruptly.

'No; only of her husband.'

'Show him her portrait.'

A shade of surprise was on Caroline's forehead. 'Shall I?' She had a dim
momentary thought that the sight of the beautiful face would not be good
for Patrick.

'Yes; let him see the woman who could throw herself away on that branded
villain called a prince, abjuring her Church for a little fouler than
hangman to me and every gentleman alive. I desire that he should see it.
Submission to the demands of her husband's policy required it of her,
she says! Show it him when he returns; you have her miniature in your
keeping. And to-morrow take him to look at the full-length of her before
she left England and ceased to be a lady of our country. I will order it
to be placed in the armoury. Let him see the miniature of her this day.'

Mr. Adister resolved at the same time that Patrick should have his
portrait of the prince for a set-off to the face of his daughter. He
craved the relief it would be to him to lay his colours on the prince
for the sparkling amazement of one whom, according to Caroline's
description, he could expect to feel with him acutely, which neither
his niece nor his lawyer had done: they never did when he painted the
prince. He was unstrung, heavily plunged in the matter of his chagrin
and grief: his unhealed wound had been scraped and strewn with salt
by his daughter's letter; he had a thirst for the kind of sympathy he
supposed he would