'Your uncle Silas, dear? It is very odd, I was just thinking of him;' and she laughed a little. 'Wondering whether that little boy could be he.' And up jumped active Cousin Monica, with a candle in her hand, upon a chair, and scrutinised the border of the sketch for a name or a date. 'Maybe on the back?' said she. And so she unhung it, and there, true enough, not on the back of the drawing, but of the frame, which was just as good, in pen-and-ink round Italian letters, hardly distinguishable now from the discoloured wood, we traced-- '_Silas Aylmer Ruthyn, AEtate_ viii. 15 _May_, 1779.' 'It is very odd I should not have been told or remembered who it was. I think if I had _ever_ been told I _should_ have remembered it. I do recollect this picture, though, I am nearly certain. What a singular child's face!' And my cousin leaned over it with a candle on each side, and her hand shading her eyes, as if seeking by aid of these fair and half-formed lineaments to read an enigma. The childish features defied her, I suppose; their secret was unfathomable, for after a good while she raised her head, still looking at the portrait, and sighed. 'A very singular face,' she said, softly, as a person might who was looking into a coffin. 'Had not we better replace it?' So the pretty oval, containing the fair golden hair and large eyes, the pale, unfathomable sphinx, remounted to its nail, and the _funeste_ and beautiful child seemed to smile down oracularly on our conjectures. 'So is the face in the large portrait--_very_ singular--more, I think, than that--handsomer too. This is a sickly child, I think; but the full-length is so manly, though so slender, and so handsome too. I always think him a hero and a mystery, and they won't tell me about him, and I can only dream and wonder.' 'He has made more people than you dream and wonder, my dear Maud. I don't know what to make of him. He is a sort of idol, you know, of your father's, and yet I don't think he helps him much. His abilities were singular; so has been his misfortune; for the rest, my dear, he is neither a hero nor a wonder. So far as I know, there are very few sublime men going about the world.' 'You really must tell me all you know about him, Cousin Monica. Now don't refuse.' 'But why should you care to hear? There is really nothing pleasant to tell.' 'That is just the reason I wish it. If it were at all pleasant, it would be quite commonplace. I like to hear of adventures, dangers, and misfortunes; and above all, I love a mystery. You know, papa will never tell me, and I dare not ask him; not that he is ever unkind, but, somehow, I am afraid; and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Mary Quince will tell me anything, although I suspect they know a good deal.' 'I don't see any good in telling you, dear, nor, to say the truth, any great harm either.'