"What is it?--and who is it?" cried Laura, standing amazed before a picture in the drawing-room at Bannisdale. In front of her, on the panelled wall, hung a dazzling portrait of a girl in white, a creature light as a flower under wind; eyes upraised and eager, as though to welcome a lover; fair hair bound turban-like with a white veil; the pretty hands playing with a book. It shone from the brown wall with a kind of natural sovereignty over all below it and around it, so brilliant was the picture, so beautiful the woman. Augustina looked up drearily. She was sitting shrunk together in a large chair, deep in some thoughts of her own. "That's our picture--the famous picture," she explained slowly. "Your Romney?" said Laura, vaguely recalling some earlier talk of her stepmother's. Augustina nodded. She stared at the picture with a curious agitation, as though she were seeing its long familiar glories for the first time. Laura was much puzzled by her. "Well, but it's magnificent!" cried the girl. "One needn't know much to know that. How can Mr. Helbeck call himself poor while he possesses such a thing?" Augustina started. "It's worth thousands," she said hastily. "We know that. There was a man from London came once, years ago. But papa turned him out--he would never sell his things. And she was our great-grandmother." An idea flashed through Laura's mind. "You don't mean to say that Mr. Helbeck is going to sell her?" said Laura impetuously. "It would be a shame!" "Alan can do what he likes with anything," said Augustina in a quick resentment. "And he wants money badly for one of his orphanages--some of it has to be rebuilt. Oh! those orphanages--how they must have weighed on him--poor Alan!--poor dear Alan!--all these years!" Mrs. Fountain clasped her thin hands together, with a sigh. "Is it they that have eaten up the house bit by bit?--poor house!--poor dear house!" repeated Laura. She was staring with an angry championship at the picture. Its sweet confiding air--as of one cradled in love, happy for generations in the homage of her kindred and the shelter of the old house--stood for all the natural human things that creeds and bigots were always trampling under foot. Mrs. Fountain, however, only shook her head. "I don't think Alan's settled anything yet. Only Mrs. Denton's afraid.--There was somebody came to see it a few days ago----" "He certainly ought not to sell it," repeated Laura with emphasis. "He has to think of the people that come after. What will they care for orphanages? He only holds the picture in trust." "There will be no one to come after," said Augustina slowly. "For of course he will never marry." "Is he too great a saint for that too?" cried Laura. "Then all I can say, Augustina, is that--it--would--do him a great deal of good." She beat her little foot on the ground impatiently, pointing the words.