both? Let me understand you. Accept my sympathy and confidence. Where
is Uriel's father? What is this mystery?"

She did not answer.

"It is for no idle curiosity that I ask," he continued. "I will appeal
to him for his family, even at the risk of his resentment. Where is
he?"

"Oh, do not ask!" she exclaimed. "You want me to tell you only the
truth. He is _there_!"

She pointed to one of the old portraits in the room--a picture fairly
painted by some provincial artist--and it revealed a handsome face, a
little voluptuous but aristocratic, the shoulders clad in a martial
cloak, the neck in ruffles and ruffles, also and a diamond in the
shirt bosom. Reybold studied it with all his mind.

"Then it is no fiction," he said, "that you have a living father, one
answering to your mother's description. Where have I seen that face?
Has some irreparable mistake, some miserable controversy, alienated
him from his wife? Has he another family?"

She answered with spirit:

"No, sir. He is my father and my brother's only. But I can tell you no
more."

"Joyce," he said, taking her hand, "this is not enough. I will not
press you to betray any secret you may possess. Keep it. But of