He was placed with his back to us, holding a large Venetian hand-mirror, framed in chiselled silver, which he had taken from a shelf of antiquities, just at such an angle that he caught the reflexion of his sister’s person. It was evident that I too was under his attention, and was resolved I wouldn’t be suspected for nothing. “Miss Searle,” I said with urgency, “promise me something.” She turned upon me with a start and a look that seemed to beg me to spare her. “Oh don’t ask me--please don’t!” It was as if she were standing on the edge of a place where the ground had suddenly fallen away, and had been called upon to make a leap. I felt retreat was impossible, however, and that it was the greater kindness to assist her to jump. “Promise me,” I repeated. Still with her eyes she protested. “Oh what a dreadful day!” she cried at last. “Promise me to let him speak to you alone if he should ask you--any wish you may suspect on your brother’s part notwithstanding.” She coloured deeply. “You mean he has something so particular to say?” “Something so particular!” “Poor cousin!” “Well, poor cousin! But promise me.” “I promise,” she said, and moved away across the long room and out of the door. “You’re in time to hear the most delightful story,” Searle began to me as I rejoined him and his host. They were standing before an old sombre portrait of a lady in the dress of Queen Anne’s time, whose ill-painted flesh-tints showed livid, in the candle-light, against her dark drapery and background. “This is Mrs. Margaret Searle--a sort of Beatrix Esmond--_qui se passait ses fantaisies_. She married a paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler, in the teeth of her whole family. Pretty Mrs. Margaret, you must have been a woman of courage! Upon my word, she looks like Miss Searle! But pray go on. What came of it all?” Our companion watched him with an air of distaste for his boisterous homage and of pity for his crude imagination. But he took up the tale with an effective dryness: “I found a year ago, in a box of very old papers, a letter from the lady in question to a certain Cynthia Searle, her elder sister. It was dated from Paris and dreadfully ill-spelled. It contained a most passionate appeal for pecuniary assistance. She had just had a baby, she was starving and dreadfully neglected by her husband--she cursed the day she had left England. It was a most dismal production. I never heard she found means to return.” “So much for marrying a Frenchman!” I said sententiously. Our host had one of his waits. “This is the only lady of the family who ever was taken in by an adventurer.” “Does Miss Searle know her history?” asked my friend with a stare at the rounded whiteness of the heroine’s cheek. “Miss Searle knows nothing!” said our host with expression. “She shall know at least the tale of Mrs. Margaret,” their guest returned; and he walked rapidly away in search of her.