"It is right that you should be the first to see it," he said. "Since there is no longer any doubt that the lady was your father's mother." Loo took the locket, looked at it with strangely glittering eyes and steady lips. He gave a sort of gasp, which all in the room heard. He was handing it back to the Vicomte de Castel Aunet without a word of comment, when a crashing fall on the bare floor startled every one. A lady had fainted. "Thank God!" muttered Dormer Colville almost in Barebone's ear and swayed against him. Barebone turned and looked into a face grey and haggard, and shining with perspiration. Instinctively he grasped him by the arm and supported him. In the confusion of the moment no one noticed Colville; for all were pressing round the prostrate lady. And in a moment Colville was himself again, though the ready smile sat oddly on such white lips. "For God's sake be careful," he said, and turned away, handkerchief in hand. For the moment the portrait was forgotten until the lady was on her feet again, smiling reassurances and rubbing her elbow. "It is nothing," she said, "nothing. My heart--that is all." And she staggered to a chair with the reassuring smile frozen on her face. Then the portrait was passed from hand to hand in silence. It was a miniature of Marie Antoinette, painted on ivory, which had turned yellow. The colours were almost lost, but the face stood clearly enough. It was the face of a young girl, long and narrow, with the hair drawn straight up and dressed high and simply on the head without ornament. "It is she," said one and another. "_C'est bien elle_." "It was painted when she was newly a queen," commented the Vicomte de Castel Aunet. "I have seen others like it, but not that one before." Barebone stood apart and no one offered to approach him. Dormer Colville had gone toward the great fireplace, and was standing by himself there with his back toward the room. He was surreptitiously wiping from his face the perspiration which had suddenly run down it, as one may see the rain running down the face of a statue. Things had taken an unexpected turn. The Marquis de Gemosac, himself always on the surface, had stirred others more deeply than he had anticipated or could now understand. France has always been the victim of her own emotions; aroused in the first instance half in idleness, allowed to swell with a semi-restraining laugh, and then suddenly sweeping and overwhelming. History tells of a hundred such crises in the pilgrimage of the French people. A few more--and historians shall write "Ichabod" across the most favoured land in Europe. It is customary to relate that, after a crisis, those most concerned in it know not how they faced it or what events succeeded it. "He never knew," we are informed, "how he got through the rest of the evening."