"Very likely! H'm--h'm--h'm! Yes--suppose I go on here: 'In obedience to your highness's august commands I have set down here the full story of my marvellous escape from prison in the Castello of Montestrapazzo, where I passed a _semestre sottoterraneo_'--six months underground--the Professor seems to have left some characteristic phrases in Italian. I won't stop to translate them unless you ask--shouldn't like to appear patronising!--'over twenty-five years since, being then quite a young man--in truth, younger than my son Gherardo, who is the bearer of this, whom you may well recognise at once by his marvellous likeness to his mother, whose affectionate greetings he will convey to you more readily than I can write them. For when I look upon his face it seems to me I almost see again the face as I painted it years ago, the _sognovegliante_ look'--the Professor fancies the writer invented this word--_dream-waking_, that sort of thing--'the _sognovegliante_ look of the eyes, the happy laughter of the mouth. And, indeed, as you know her now, she is not unlike the boy, and she changes but little with the years. For even the beautiful golden hair keeps its colour of those days....'" At this point Madeline interrupted: "But that's the picture-girl down to the ground. How can anybody doubt it? Why, look at her!" Mr. Pelly was dubious. "I don't know. I couldn't say. There's hardly enough to go upon." "That's exactly like a scholarly old gentleman! But, Uncle Christopher dear, do just get up a minute and come here and _look_!" Mr. Pelly complied. Generally speaking, we thought it might be rash to allow ourselves to be influenced by a description; it was always safest to suspend judgment until after something else, or something still later than something else. We had very little to go upon, independently of the fact that the name Raimondi connected itself with both the portrait and the manuscript. "Then go independently! However, let's come back and get on with the story." The speaker went back to her place at her mother's feet, and Mr. Pelly resumed. "Where were we? Oh--'colour of those days'--oh yes!--'and the curvature of the line of his nostril that is all his mother's....'" Madeline inserted a _sotto voce_: "Of course, it's the picture-girl!" The reader took no notice. "... That he will prove himself of service to his Excellency the Duke I cannot doubt, for the boy is ready with his pen as with his sword, though, indeed, as I myself was in old days, a thought too quick with the latter, and hot-headed on occasion shown. But him you will come to know. I, for my part, will now comply as best I may with your wish, and tell you the story of my imprisonment and escape.