and startled me because she bears a precise resemblance to one of the
portraits in Chillingsworth--painted about two hundred years ago. Such
extraordinary likenesses do not occur without reason, as a rule, and, as
I admired my portrait so deeply that I have written a story about it,
you will not think it unnatural if I am more than curious to discover
the reason for this resemblance. The little girl tells me that her
ancestors lived in this very house, and as my little girl lived next
door, so to speak, there undoubtedly is a natural reason for the
resemblance."

His host closed the Bible, put his spectacles in his pocket, and hobbled
out of the house.

"He'll never talk of family secrets," said an elderly woman, who
introduced herself as the old man's daughter, and had placed bread and
milk before the guest. "There are secrets in every family, and we have
ours, but he'll never tell those old tales. All I can tell you is that
an ancestor of little Blanche went to wreck and ruin because of some
fine lady's doings, and killed himself. The story is that his boys
turned out bad. One of them saw his crime, and never got over the
shock; he was foolish like, after. The mother was a poor scared sort of
creature, and hadn't much influence over the other boy. There seemed to
be a blight on all the man's descendants, until one of them went to
America. Since then, they haven't prospered, exactly, but they've done
better, and they don't drink so heavy."

"They haven't done so well," remarked a worn patient-looking woman. Orth
typed her as belonging to the small middle-class of an interior town of
the eastern United States.