That the initials painted on the box and engraved on the frame inside were C. L. and not C. S. proved one thing. However guilty she had been, it was no transient influence which had ruined Clementina. Had any chance revealed the miniature’s existence to Mr. Speid, it would have explained the letter he had received from her father after his own refusal by her, and it would have shown him an everyday tragedy upon which he had unwittingly intruded, to his own undoing and to hers. Like many another, she had given her affections to a younger son--for Robert, in inheriting Fullarton, had succeeded a brother--and, her parents being ambitious, the obstacle which has sundered so many since the world began had sundered these two also. Mr. Lauder was a violent and determined man, and his daughter, through fear of him, had kept secret the engagement which she knew must be a forlorn hope so soon as he should discover it. When chance, which played traitor to the couple, brought it to light, the sword fell, and Robert, banished from the presence of the Lauder family, returned to Fullarton and to the society of his devoted elder brother, who asked no more than that the younger, so much cleverer than himself, should share all he had. The miniature, which he had gone to Edinburgh to sit for, and for which he had caused the little box to be contrived, was conveyed to Clementina with much difficulty and some bribery. He had chosen Italian words to surround it, for he had made the ‘grand tour’ with his brother, and had some knowledge of that language. There is a fashion, even in sentiment, and, in those days, Italian was as acceptable a vehicle for it to the polite world as French would be now. She yielded to circumstances which she had no more strength to fight and married Mr. Speid a couple of years later; and she kept the relic locked away among her most cherished treasures. She had not changed, not one whit, and when, at her husband’s desire, she sat for her portrait to David Martin, then in the zenith of his work in the Scottish capital, she held the little box in her hand, telling the painter it was too pretty to go down to oblivion, and must be immortalized also. Martin, vastly admiring his sitter, replied gallantly, and poor Clementina, who never allowed her dangerous treasure to leave her hand, sat in agony till it was painted, and she could return it to the locked drawer in which it was kept. There was a vague hope in her mind that the man she had not ceased to love might, one day, see the portrait and understand the silent message it contained. Meanwhile, at Fullarton, Robert, who had been absent when Clementina came to Whanland as a bride, was trying to cure his grief, and, superficially, succeeding well enough to make him think himself a sounder man than he was.