"Have you seen a likeness of him?" Phyllys was picturing still the hidden portrait, declared by Mrs. Keith to represent her brother in theatricals. "Good while ago. Big-made, substantial fellow, rather jolly-looking—not Mrs. Keith's style." Giles approached in time for the last words, and Phyllys said, "We are talking about Mrs. Keith's brother. Did you ever see him?" "Just before he went out. I remember a big man, as Mr. Dugdale says, with a hearty laugh. Very jolly, and good to us little fellows." "Not at all Colin's style!" thought Phyllys. She pondered much that afternoon and evening on the enigmatical ways of Mrs. Keith. That the hidden portrait was the lost heirloom it was impossible longer to doubt,—that it was "not," as professed by Mrs. Keith, the likeness of her only brother, but of a young sculptor, ancestor to Giles, who had lived two centuries earlier, and whose gift, resembling that of Colin, had apparently developed in him something of the same type of features and expression. Mrs. Keith's extreme dislike to the resemblance arose, doubtless, from her aversion to sculpture as a pursuit for her son. An illogical aversion, yet very real. Unreasonableness seemed in her to be a leading characteristic; perhaps connected with that touch of brain-weakness which Phyllys had begun to suspect, and of which Mr. Dugdale spoke frankly. "A kind of brain-oddity!" decided Phyllys. "But what shoals of lies she has told!" Then a rebound. In past days Phyllys had been weary of the little Midfell home. She had found Barbara unendurable, had craved escape from Mrs. Wyverne's narrow judgments. Now, in fuller understanding of Mrs. Keith, her mind leaped back to the grandmother, with a sense of repose in that strong solid goodness, in the certainty that she need never fear there to find aught of exaggeration, double meaning, falsity. She recalled, with loving respect, Mrs. Wyverne's sturdy truth and religious devotion—a devotion lived out in daily life, marred by no such terrible inconsistencies. Mrs. Keith made a show of religion, but did not live up to it. At this juncture, the girl could almost have exclaimed, "Let me go back to the old life, with its limitations, and its reality!" But other elements existed. She could never again live the old life as in the past. In many ways she had expanded beyond it. She might meet its limitations more patiently, because able to value more truly what it held of real worth; yet those limitations, the spirit of narrowness, the contracted outlook, would try her more severely than of old. And—there was Giles! She could not put Giles aside.