He was telling her of the grim passage of Cape Horn, and of the savages who lived in those wild parts, when a sudden gleam from his inner consciousness swept across his mind. He remembered how he had told the same tales to that silent, sad-eyed girl whose life had had no glamour of homage in it, and whose tragic face looked out at him from a mist of madness. He grew silent quite suddenly, bringing his voyages to a clumsy and confused end, and not noticing the questioning look in Hortense’s eyes. He felt instinctively that she was nearer to him than he wished. Her beauty became a sudden glare, clashing with something more spiritual, more mysterious, and more strangely sad. He was glad when some of the gentlemen rose and began to kiss Father Coleman’s hand. They went down by the same stairway, Hortense herself lighting them with a little Italian lamp. She was very close to John Gore in the passageway. Her dress brushed against him, while the lamp she carried made her beauty seem softly brilliant amid the shadows. “Good-night, my lord; good-night, Sir John; I hope we have not frightened you very greatly?” She searched him with her great eyes, so full of intentness for the moment that he felt their power and could not look away. “You must tell me more of those wild seas, the great rivers, and the Indians, the gold and the pearls.” He bowed to her a little gauchely, but did not touch her hand, and he had a last glimpse of her standing there with the glow from the lamp upon her face as he went out into the night. My lord appeared in excellent spirits as they walked home together in the dark. His son had a silent mood upon him, and Stephen Gore found nothing in his silence to be reproved. “Pearls and gold and strange lands. That is Hortense,” he said, suddenly, as they entered the broad street; “a splendid creature, too—in heart as well as in body.” John Gore walked on with no sound save the crisp beat of his feet upon the stones. “What was the meaning of it all, sir?” he asked, at last. “Meaning, Jack?” “Yes.” “Why, just what you please, my lad. We choice spirits and good Catholics love to have our gossip, and you can find in it just as much as you wish to know. You must come with me again, and tell the lady more about the pearls and the gold and the strange lands. I tell you, John Gore, there is something for you to discover more mysterious and alluring than anything Cortés and all the Spaniards discovered in the New World over the sea.” XXV In the salon of the Purcells’ house in Pall Mall there hung a portrait of the Spanish lady whom the Purcell of Queen Bess’s days had won with the romantic daring of an adventurer’s sword. It was the portrait of a young woman in a quaint stiff dress of black and gold, her dark hair curled loosely about her head, and her black eyes looking down out of a proud and rather peevish face.