"Well," said Walter Lord, slowly, "Anne had her reason, poor little thing. She was high-strung, and sensitive almost to the point of obsession about----But there"--he broke off--"she might have trusted me. I'd never have put the poor child--Anne Blakeslie's child--to shame.... And I finally got what I was after." Even though many years had passed, there was a little triumph in his voice at the recollection. "I got her to playing with a doll in the sitter's chair, and I caught her one day in just the position I wanted. Would you like to see? I know just where----" "I certainly would," said Peter. Walter Lord jumped quickly up from his chair, threw the end of a cigarette out of the window, and disappeared up a small back stairway which led directly from the room. Peter heard him walking about overhead for a moment. Presently he reappeared, with something in his hand. He laid it down, and lighted a lamp on the table, for the room was now almost dark. "There she is," he said, leaning over Peter's shoulder, and pointing to the little old photograph. "And, whatever chance has happened to her, I'll wager that's the only photograph in existence of Anne Curwood." CHAPTER XVIII ROSAMOND'S SECRET Peter took the yellowed card in his hands and looked at it long and eagerly. For nearly a month past he would have been ready to pay almost any price for a portrait of Anne Blake, and now, here in his hand, he held the thing he had been wishing for--and, for his purpose, it might as well have been a piece of blank pasteboard--or so he thought at the moment. The child face of Anne Curwood was shown in profile, facing the left. The tell-tale mark, which had probably changed but little in the succeeding years, the birthmark by which Peter hoped to identify her without shadow of doubt, appeared not at all. This was the way in which Walter Lord had shielded a child's sensitiveness. He had, with careful purpose, selected a view which showed the little face unmarred. That there was a hidden disfigurement Peter had no reasonable doubt, both because of what Lord had already said and because of his own previous knowledge, but he must make sure. He must force Lord to tell him. "Why, she's a beautiful little kid," Peter said, abruptly. "I thought, from what you said, she must be as ugly as the dickens. Why in the world was she so funny about letting you----" "Poor little thing! It wasn't funny," said the old man, compassionately. "If either you or I had the same reason, we'd have felt the same way." "But I don't see----" Peter began. "No, you don't," said Lord, quickly. "I took very good pains that no one should see it." "See--what?" persisted Peter. "Why," said the old man, hesitatingly, "the little thing was born with a dreadful mark on the other side of her face, the right side."