'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