A few more questions were asked her, of no import, and then they rose. When Licorice set her free from household duties, Belasez took her way to the little closet over the porch which served as her father's library. He was the happy possessor of eleven volumes,--a goodly number at that date. Eight she passed by, knowing them to contain no pictures. The ninth was an illuminated copy of the Brut, which of course began, as all chronicles then did, with the creation; but Belasez looked through it twice without finding any thing to satisfy her. Next came the Chronicle of Benoit, but the illuminations in this were merely initials and tail-pieces in arabesque. There was only one left, and it was the largest volume in the collection. Belasez could not remember having ever opened it. She pulled it down now, just missing a sprained wrist in the process, and found it to be a splendid copy of the Hagiographa, with full-page pictures, glowing with colours and gold. Of course, the illuminations had been executed by Christian hands; but all these books had come to Abraham in exchange for bad debts, and he was not so consistent as to refuse to look at the representations of created things, however wicked he might account it to produce them. Belasez turned over the stiff leaves, one after another, till she reached the Book of Esther. Yes, surely that was the picture she remembered. There sat the King Ahasuerus on a curule chair, wearing a floriated crown and a mantle clasped at the neck with a golden fibula; and there fainted Queen Esther in the arms of her ladies, arrayed in the tight gown, the pocketing sleeve, the wimple, and all other monstrosities of the early Plantagenet era. A Persian satrap, enclosed in a coat of mail and a surcoat with a silver shield, whereon an exceedingly rampant red lion was disporting itself, appeared to be coming to the help of his liege lady; while a tall white lily, in a flower-pot about twice the size of the throne, occupied one side of the picture. To all these details Belasez paid no attention. The one thing at which she looked was the face of the fainting Queen, which was turned full towards the spectator. It was a very lovely face of a decidedly Jewish type. But what made Belasez glance from it to the brazen mirror fixed to the wall opposite? Was it Anegay of whom Bruno had been thinking when he murmured that she was so like some one? Undoubtedly there was a likeness. The same pure oval face, the smooth calm brow, the dark glossy hair: but it struck Belasez that her own features, as seen in the mirror, were the less prominently Jewish. And, once more, who was Anegay?