Wyant glanced at Mrs. Lombard, who continued to knit impassively. “No, no,” said his host, “my wife will not come with us. You might not suspect it from her conversation, but my wife has no feeling for art--Italian art, that is; for no one is fonder of our early Victorian school.” “Frith’s Railway Station, you know,” said Mrs. Lombard, smiling. “I like an animated picture.” Miss Lombard, who had unlocked the door, held back the tapestry to let her father and Wyant pass out; then she followed them down a narrow stone passage with another door at its end. This door was iron-barred, and Wyant noticed that it had a complicated patent lock. The girl fitted another key into the lock, and Doctor Lombard led the way into a small room. The dark panelling of this apartment was irradiated by streams of yellow light slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and in the central brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of faded velvet. “A little too bright, Sybilla,” said Doctor Lombard. His face had grown solemn, and his mouth twitched nervously as his daughter drew a linen drapery across the upper part of the window. “That will do--that will do.” He turned impressively to Wyant. “Do you see the pomegranate bud in this rug? Place yourself there--keep your left foot on it, please. And now, Sybilla, draw the cord.” Miss Lombard advanced and placed her hand on a cord hidden behind the velvet curtain. “Ah,” said the doctor, “one moment: I should like you, while looking at the picture, to have in mind a few lines of verse. Sybilla--” Without the slightest change of countenance, and with a promptness which proved her to be prepared for the request, Miss Lombard began to recite, in a full round voice like her mother’s, St. Bernard’s invocation to the Virgin, in the thirty-third canto of the Paradise. “Thank you, my dear,” said her father, drawing a deep breath as she ended. “That unapproachable combination of vowel sounds prepares one better than anything I know for the contemplation of the picture.” As he spoke the folds of velvet slowly parted, and the Leonardo appeared in its frame of tarnished gold: From the nature of Miss Lombard’s recitation Wyant had expected a sacred subject, and his surprise was therefore great as the composition was gradually revealed by the widening division of the curtain.