“Oh, I’m real sorry. How could I know?” Maimie whispered back, with a face of guileless innocence touched with anguish. Aloud, she made some remark about another picture on the same page, and Usk returned to his former seat. As he did so, he was struck by a certain alert look, which he knew well, on his uncle’s face. Félicia had turned her head when Maimie claimed her attention, and the lamplight fell full upon her profile, which was in a line with that of Queen Ernestine. Usk saw the two faces from one side, his uncle from the other, but at the same moment it flashed upon both of them that the profiles were extraordinarily alike. Lord Cyril cast a glance of calm scrutiny at his nephew, and resumed the conversation Maimie had interrupted. It was possible that he regarded the likeness as merely a coincidence, and Usk hoped this might be the case. It might have seemed to strengthen this opinion that Lord Cyril made no remark to his nephew, but some hours later, when he looked into his wife’s boudoir, where she was spending a few minutes in chat with the sallow-faced lady-in-waiting, it was clear that he had not forgotten what he had seen. “And what do you think of your niece that is to be, Ernestine?” he asked. “She is very beautiful,” said the Queen, somewhat doubtfully, “but it does not seem to me that poor Usk has found her heart yet.” “Perhaps she has none to find. What does Mlle. Mirkovics think?” “Miss Steinherz has something of the _grand air_, though there is a want of repose in her manners,” was the temperate reply. “One would scarcely expect that in an American, perhaps. But she carries herself like a queen in her own right.” “Every American woman is that by right of birth,” said Lord Cyril lazily. “Does Félicia’s face remind you of any one, Ernestine?” “Oh, you have noticed it, then? The likeness haunted me all evening, until I happened to see her refusing to say good night to Usk. He had offended her in some way, and she would only let him kiss her hand. Then I saw a likeness to my aunt Claudine, who married the King of Cantabria. It was not a happy marriage, you know, Cyril, and her portrait has a look of haughty resignation about it--a kind of ‘scorn of scorn.’ It is only in profile that there is a likeness, for none of our family have that little rosebud mouth or those surprised eyebrows, and Félicia is much prettier than my aunt ever was.”