here they would be more
comfortable.

Edmonson bowed slightly in answer, smiled, thanked him, but observed
that it was most flattering to an orator to find his audience increase
as he went on, and began:

"I am to tell you who this gentleman of the portrait is, and why I
resemble him."

All at once Stephen glanced at Elizabeth. He had found her in the hall
with Edmonson. Had she any hand in this unveiling of an ancestral face?
He thought of the possibility of shame that might follow--of shame,
because he remembered the talk of the two men in the woods and the old
butler's look at Edmonson that very morning. If this triumphant fellow
had any such thing to tell, did she already know it? Was she upon such
terms of intimacy with him as this? She stood apart, still near the
doorway where Edmonson had left her. None of the curiosity expressed
everywhere else was in her face. She seemed scarcely listening; she
looked as if she were far away and the people about her and the words
they were saying belonged to a different world. But it was not so, for
it was the consciousness that she was in the world about her and bound
to it that gave her the expression of struggle. Chains held her when she
wanted to be free. She was one too many here. Before her was Archdale's
face as he had looked at Katie, and between these two a stupid woman
whom she had no patience with, whom she hated--herself. And now there
might be coming an added pain that she had brought. She did not care
especially for Archdale's pain, except that it was of her bringing.

But Edmonson went on talking, and Stephen, like the others, forgot
everything in listening. He saw his father's brows contract, and knew
that he was biting his under lip hard, as he did when he was much
troubled.

Edmonson still went on with his story. He certainly made it interesting.
Stephen's secret uneasiness passed into surprise, distrust, conviction,
inward disturbance as he stood with his haughty air unchanged.

CHAPTER XIX.

RANKLING ARROWS.

Elizabeth was alone at last, that is, as much as a thought pursuing like
a personality lets one be alone. When she crossed her room in the
silence it was a relief to hear no voices, not to be obliged to answer
when she had not listened and was afraid lest she should not answer
rightly. Yet the events of the last few hours, the stray words as they
seemed to her that she had heard, the faces that had been before her
kept moving on before he