“A Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. A widow with a daughter though she looks in her teens. She’s older than the Princess was, but she’s kept her beauty as ladies know how to in these days. It’s wonderful to see them side by side. But it’s only a few that saw her Highness as she was the season she came with the Prince to visit at Windsor in Queen Victoria’s day. Did your grace—” he checked himself feeling that he was perhaps somewhat exceeding Bond Street limits. “Yes. I saw her,” said the Duchess. “If these are for sale I will take them both.” “I’m selling a good many of them. People buy them because the likeness makes them a sort of curiosity. Mrs. Gareth-Lawless is a very modern lady and she is quite amused.” The Duchess took the two photographs home with her and looked at them a great deal afterwards as she sat in her winged chair. They were on her table when Coombe came to drink tea with her in the afternoon. When he saw them he stood still and studied the two faces silently for several seconds. “Did you ever before see a likeness so wonderful?” he said at last. “Never,” she answered. “Or an unlikeness. That is the most wonderful of all—the unlikeness. It is the same body inhabited by two souls from different spheres.” His next words were spoken very slowly. “I should have been sure you would see that,” he commented. “I lost my breath for a second when I saw them side by side in the shop window—and the next moment I lost it again because I saw—what I speak of—the utter world wide apartness. It is in their eyes. She—,” she touched the silver frame enclosing the young Princess, “was a little saint—a little spirit. There never was a young human thing so transparently pure.” The rigid modeling of his face expressed a thing which, himself recognizing its presence, he chose to turn aside as he moved towards the mantel and leaned on it. The same thing caused his voice to sound hoarse and low as he spoke in answer, saying something she had not expected him to say. Its unexpectedness in fact produced in her an effect of shock. “And she was the possession of a brute incarnate, mad with unbridled lust and drink and abnormal furies. She was a child saint, and shook with terror before him. He killed her.” “I believe he did,” she said unsteadily after a breath space of pause. “Many people believed so though great effort was made to silence the stories. But there were too many stories and they were so unspeakable that even those in high places were made furiously indignant. He was not received here at Court afterwards. His own emperor could not condone what he did. Public opinion was too strong.”