He replaced it in its box, shutting the lid, and went to the writing-table behind him to close the drawer; as he turned back quickly, his coat-tail swept the whole thing off the polished mahogany, and sent it spinning into the darkness. He saw the lid open as it went and the chain flash into a corner of the room, like a snake with glittering eyes. He sprang after it, and brought it back to the light to find it unhurt, then went to recover the box. This was not easy to do, for the lid had rolled under one piece of furniture and the lower part under another; but, with the help of a stick, he raked both out of the shadows, and carried them, one in either hand, to examine them under the candle. It struck him that, for an object of its size, the lower half was curiously heavy, and he weighed it up and down, considering it. As he did so, it rattled, showing that the fall must have loosened something in its construction. It was a deep box, and its oval shape did not give the idea that it had been originally made to hold the chain he had found in it. It was lined with silk which had faded to a nondescript colour, and he guessed, from the presence of a tiny knob which he could feel under the thin stuff, that it had a false bottom and that the protuberance was the spring which opened it. This had either got out of repair from long disuse, or else its leap across the floor had injured it, for, press as he might, sideways or downwards, he could produce no effect. He turned the box upside down, and the false bottom fell out, broken, upon the table, exposing a miniature which fitted closely into the real one behind it. It was the carefully-executed likeness of a young man, whose face set some fugitive note of association vibrating in him, and made him pause as he looked, while he mentally reviewed the various ancestors on his walls. The portrait had been taken full face, which prevented the actual outline of the features from being revealed, but it was the expression which puzzled Gilbert by its familiarity. The character of the eyebrows, drooping at the outer corner of the eyes, gave a certain look of petulance that had nothing transient and was evidently natural to the face. He had seen something like it quite lately, though whether on a human countenance or a painted one, he could not tell. The young man’s dress was of a fashion which had long died out. Under the glass was a lock of hair, tied with a twist of gold thread and not unlike his own in colour, and the gold rim which formed the frame was engraved with letters so fine as to be almost illegible. He tried to take out the miniature, but he could not do so, for it was fixed firmly into the bottom of the box, with the evident purpose of making its concealment certain. He drew the light close. The sentence running round the band was ‘_Addio, anima mia_,’ and, in a circle just below the hair, was engraved in a smaller size these words: ‘_To C. L. from R. F._, 1765.’