‘Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and trials, so far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur collection of—of horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can you imagine my feelings when towards the end of the book about thirty pages from the end, I came upon this—gloating up at me from the table in my house before my very eyes?’ She cast a rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her silk skirt, drew out, from the pocket beneath, the few crumpled pages, and passed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him plainly in view, as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped, and holding the loose leaves with both fat hands between his knees, stared into the portrait. Then he truculently lifted his cropped head. ‘What did I say?’ he said. ‘What did I _say?_ What did I tell old Bethany in this very room? What d’ye think of that, Mrs Lovat, for a portrait of Arthur Lawford? What d’ye make of that, Craik—eh? Devil—eh?’ Mrs Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her finger-tips handed the sheets on to her neighbour, who gazed with a settled and mournful frown and returned them to Sheila. She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in her pocket. She swept her hands over her skirts, and turned to Danton. ‘You agree,’ she inquired softly, ‘it’s like?’ ‘Like! It’s the livin’ livid image. The livin’ image,’ he repeated, stretching out his arm, ‘as he stood there that very night.’ ‘What will you say, then,’ said Sheila, quietly, ‘What will you say if I tell you that that man, Nicholas de Sabathier, has been in his grave for over a hundred years?’ Danton’s little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even further into his head. ‘I’d say, Mrs Lawford, if you’ll excuse the word, that it might be a damn horrible coincidence—I’d go farther, an almost incredible coincidence. But if you want the sober truth, I’d say it was nothing more than a crafty, clever, abominable piece of trickery. That’s what I’d say. Oh, you don’t know, Mrs Lovat. When a scamp’s a scamp, he’ll stop at nothing. _I_ could tell you some tales.’ ‘Ah, but that’s not all,’ said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly one by one. ‘We all of us know that my husband’s story was that he had gone down to Widderstone—into the churchyard, for his convalescent ramble; that story’s true. We all know that he said he had had a fit, a heart attack, and that a kind of—of stupor had come over him. I believe on my honour that’s true too. But no one knows but he himself and Mr Bethany and I, that it was a wretched broken grave, quite at the bottom of the hill, that he chose for his resting place, nor—and I can’t get the scene out of my head—nor that the name on that one solitary tombstone down there was—was...this!’ Danton rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t begin to follow,’ he said stubbornly.