"Poor girl!" murmured Stella. There was silence for a moment. "And those three live there all alone?" she said. "Not always," he replied, musingly. "Sometimes, not often, the son Leycester comes down. He is Viscount Trevor." "The son," said Stella. "And what is he like?" The question seemed to set some train of thought in action; the old man relapsed into silence for a few minutes. Then suddenly but gently he rose, and going to the other end of the room, fetched a picture from amongst several standing against the wall, and held it toward her. "That is Lord Leycester," he said. Stella took the canvas in her hand, and held it to the light, and an exclamation broke involuntarily from her lips. "How beautiful he is!" The old man took the picture from her, and resting it on his knees, gazed at it musingly. "Yes," he said, "it is a grand face; one does not see such a face often." Stella leant over the chair and looked at it with a strange feeling of interest and curiosity, such as no simply beautiful picture would have aroused. It was not the regularity of the face, with its clear-cut features and its rippling chestnut hair, that, had it been worn by a Wyndward of a hundred years ago, would have fallen in rich curls upon the square, well-formed shoulders. It was not the beauty of the face, but a something indefinable in the carriage of the head and the expression of the full, dark eyes that attracted, almost fascinated, her. It was in a voice almost hushed by the indescribable effect produced by the face, that she said: "And he is like that?" "It is lifelike," he answered. "I, who painted it, should not say it, but it is like him nevertheless--that is Leycester Wyndward. Why did you ask?" Stella hesitated. "Because--I scarcely know. It is such a strange face, uncle. The eyes--what is it in the eyes that makes me almost unable to look away from them?" "The reflection of a man's soul, Stella," he said. It was a strange answer, and the girl looked down at the strange face interrogatively. "The reflection of a man's soul, Stella. The Wyndwards have always been a wild, reckless, passionate race; here, in this village, they have innumerable legends of the daring deeds of the lords of Wyndward. Murder, rapine, and high-handed tyranny in the olden times, wild license and desperate profligacy in these modern ones; but of all the race this Leycester Wyndward is the wildest and most heedless. Look at him, Stella, you see him here in his loose shooting-jacket, built by Poole; with the diamond pin in his irreproachable scarf, with his hair cut to the regulation length: I see him in armor with his sword upraised to watch the passionate fire of his eyes. There is a picture in the great gallery up yonder of one of the Wyndwards clad just so, in armor of glittering steel, with one foot on the body of a prostrate foe, one hand upraised to strike the death-dealing blow of his battle-ax. Yes, Leycester Wyndward should have lived four centuries back."