“A fellow you know--who may that be? is his portrait among those I have been looking at? This,” said Richard, holding it fast and disregarding Val’s hand, which was stretched out to take it, “is an interesting face.” What feelings were in the man’s breast as he looked at it who can tell? Surprise, almost delirious, though he hid it as he had trained himself to hide everything; quick-springing curiosity, almost hatred, wild eagerness to know what his son knew of her. He made that remark about the interesting face not unfeelingly, but unawares, to fill up the silence, because everything in him was stirred up into such wild impulses of emotion. The light swam in his eyes; yet he continued to see the strange little picture thus blown into his hand as it seemed by some caprice of fate. As for Valentine, he felt a repugnance incomprehensible to himself to say anything about Dick or his mother, and could have snatched the scrap of photograph out of his father’s hand, though he could not tell why. “Oh, it is not much,” he said--“it is not any one you would know. It is the mother of a lad I took a great fancy to a few years ago. He was on the rafts at Eton, and used to do all sorts of things for me. That’s his mother--and indeed there’s himself in the corner, if you could see him. I found it in a photograph of the river; and as I knew the people, and it is so seldom one sees people who are unconscious of their likenesses being taken, I bought it; but of course it has no interest to any one who does not know the originals,” and he put out his hand for it again. “Pardon,” said Mr Ross, serenely--“it has an interest. The face is a very remarkable face, like one I remember seeing years ago. What sort of a person was her son?” By skilful questions he drew from Val all that he knew: the whole story of Dick’s struggle upwards; of his determination to do well; of the way he had risen in the world. Val mixed himself as little as he could with the narrative, but could not help showing unwittingly how much share he had in it; and at last grew voluble on the subject, flattered by the interest his father took in it. “You say the son was at the rafts at Eton, and yet this picture was taken at Oxford. How was that?” said Richard. Val was standing behind him all this time, and their looks had not met. “Well, sir,” said Val, “I hope you won’t think, as Grinder did, that it was my love of what he called low society. If Brown is low society, I should like to know where to find better.” “So Grinder said it was your love of low society?” “He wrote to my grandfather,” said Val, sore at the recollection, “but fortunately they knew me better; and when I explained everything, grandmamma, like the old darling she is, sent me ten pounds to buy Brown a present. I got him some books, and crayons, and carving things----” “Yes; but you have not told me how this came to be taken at Oxford,” said Richard, persistent.