“Mischievous as a Barbary ape—kind, and sweet as the west wind,” said Sir John. “And your boy?” asked Angela, reclasping the bracelet on the fair, round arm, having looked her fill at the mutinous eyes, the brown, crisply curling hair, dainty, pointed chin, and dimpled cheeks. “Have you his picture, too?” “Not his; but I wear his father’s likeness somewhere betwixt buckram and Flanders lace,” answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from amidst the splendours of her corsage. “I call it next my heart; but there is a stout fortification of whalebone between heart and picture. You have gloated enough on the daughter’s impertinent visage. Look now at the father, whom she resembles in little, as a kitten resembles a tiger.” She handed her sister an oval locket, bordered with diamonds, and held by a slender Indian chain; and Angela saw the face of the brother-in-law whose kindness and hospitality had been so freely promised to her. She explored the countenance long and earnestly. “Well, do you think I chose him for his beauty?” asked Hyacinth. “You have devoured every lineament with that serious gaze of yours, as if you were trying to read the spirit behind that mask of flesh. Do you think him handsome?” Angela faltered: but was unskilled in flattery, and could not reply with a compliment. “No, sister; surely none have ever called this countenance handsome; but it is a face to set one thinking.” “Ay, child, and he who owns the face is a man to set one thinking. He has made me think many a time when I would have travelled a day’s journey to escape the thoughts he forced upon me. He was not made to bask in the sunshine of life. He is a stormy petrel. It was for his ugliness I chose him. Those dark stern features, that imperious mouth, and a brow like the Olympian Jove. He scared me into loving him. I sheltered myself upon his breast from the thunder of his brow, the lightning of his eye.” “He has a look of his cousin Wentworth,” said Sir John. “I never see him but I think of that murdered man—my father’s friend and mine—whom I have never ceased to mourn.” “Yet their kin is of the most distant,” said Hyacinth. “It is strange that there should be any likeness.” “Faces appear and reappear in families,” answered her father. “You may observe that curiously recurring likeness in any picture-gallery, if the family portraits cover a century or two. Louis has little in common with his grandfather; but two hundred years hence there may be a prince of the royal house whose every feature shall recall Henry the Great”