McTaggart felt a curious pride, swift and clean, run through him. These were his! The same blood stirred in his veins; here was his real inheritance! He passed slowly along the room. Men in armour challenged him; Cardinals in scarlet robes; fair women smiled down; children paused in their play... Then he came to the last picture, vivid, with its modern paint, in contrast to those earlier ones, softened by the touch of time. A young girl in a white dress, a blue riband at her waist and a leghorn hat that swung from her arm wreathed with tiny pink roses. One hand, with taper [Transcriber's note: tapering?] fingers, lay on the sleek head of a greyhound, the other held her flowing skirts from beneath which a slender foot in white stocking and buckled shoe pointed its way down marble steps against a background of cypresses. And the face? The smile so like his own, the dark hair piled high, the slim form and girlish grace...? Tears rose to the young man's eyes. Here was his mother in her youth. Before that first season in Rome when she had met his father there, and, with the passion of her race, loved and married the hardy Scot, brought down the anger of her house and sailed away to that northern land never more to return home. It seemed to her son that she smiled now with triumph in her glowing eyes; calling upon him to vindicate the choice she had made in the past. And, suddenly, the deeper side of his nature responded to the cry. He saw that it lay within his hands to restore her tarnished honour now. He drew himself up, his mouth firm, aware of a new responsibility. The fairy atmosphere had fled--this was life ... no mere adventure. He was the last Maramonte. His eyes swept down the long room, past Cesare--the patriot--to Giordano, hero of Montaperti. His face, under its olive skin, paled, then flushed; his eyes were grave. For he must hand on the torch ... he caught his breath, seeing Cydonia. And a new reverence tinged his love. Not only sweetheart and wife but mother. And at the word he pictured her with a little golden-headed son, clasped within her loving arms. He had that passionate affection the Italian--of all nations on earth--feels for his offspring and, looking up into his mother's lovely face, he shared his secret hope with her. Then he started with a frown. For, like some unworthy ghost into that throng, centuries old, came the heavy form of Cadell. This was the blood he chose to mix with that proud Maramonte strain! It seemed to him, at his treachery, a silence fell upon the room; eyes turned with a cold stare, haughty faces sneered at him... Cydonia's parent!--He saw him there with his bourgeois birth stamped upon him; heard again that grating voice, marked the coarse congested face. For a moment he shrank from the tie. Then the quick reaction came. What did he owe to this ancient stock? How had they treated his fair young mother?