It was true that most of the Gascoynes were dark, but Ethel, the sixth Earl, was more like a Southern Italian than an Englishman. The name sounded curious as belonging to a man. He must have had singularly fine eyes, and yet the painter, with rare perception, had painted them half closed. To have done otherwise would have been obviously wrong. There was not a feature or a point in the portrait which did not suggest subtlety. Since that day I have often sat and gazed at the picture. It has a fascination for me which never palls. I intended to have had my own hung by the side of it. Indeed, I have left orders for a portrait to be done. In common with most people who walk their way in secret he had apparently a love of green, for though the picture is slightly disturbed by a note of scarlet, in this again the artist showed rare judgment. He had rightly felt that the composition, to be characteristic, required it. The figure in the picture wears emerald earrings, and his sword, belt, and boots are embroidered with jewels. The guide book tells us that he secured the title by treachery. He was more than suspected of poisoning his eldest brother, and was known to have killed in a duel another brother who stood between himself and the earldom. He spent, so the guide told us, a great deal of his life in Italy, where his doings were reported to have been of unfathomable infamy. Late in life, long after the period of the emerald earrings, he returned to Hammerton, and if his youth had been prodigal he compensated for it by a penurious old age. He shut himself up in a tower and left the remainder of the castle to go to rack and ruin. He had one companion, reputed to be an Italian magician. The countryside told awful tales of the secret rites and horrors practised by these two, and the guide-book mentioned a village maiden spirited away by supernatural means and compelled to bear them company against her will. True, another chronicler of the time confidently asserted that the self-same maiden was afterwards seen in a neighbouring town in very undesirable company, but this latter historian was a Gascoyne and obviously biassed. I was in dread lest a most extraordinary coincidence should strike the guide or the excursionists. I at once noted the great likeness between the portrait and myself. The features were Jewish and so were mine. This was the more curious because in this respect we had no common ancestor. He must have been about my build and height, and the eyes seemed to meet mine with a slightly mocking smile of recognition and a subtle under-glance of sympathy.