Betsy's afternoon tea, when the cobs returned from Romsey. She put Lear
back in his place, and strolled slowly through the rooms, opening one
into another, to the hall, where she stopped idly to look at her
favourite picture, that portrait of Sir Tristram Wendover which was
attributed to Vandyke--a noble portrait, and with much of Vandyke's
manner, whoever the painter. It occupied the place of honour in a
richly-carved panel above the wide chimney-piece, a trophy of arms
arranged on each side.

Ida stood gazing dreamily at that picture--the dark, earnest eyes, under
strongly marked brows, the commanding features, somewhat ruggedly
modelled, but fine in their general effect--a Rembrandt face--every line
telling; a face in which manhood and intellect predominated over physical
beauty; and yet to Ida's fancy the face was the finest she had ever seen.
It was her ideal of the knightly countenance, the face of the man who has
won many a hard fight over all comers, and has beaten that last and worst
enemy, his own lower nature, leaving the lofty soul paramount over the
world, the flesh, and the devil. So must Lancelot have looked, Ida
thought, towards the close of life, when conscience had conquered
passion. It was a face that showed the traces of sorrows lived down and
temptations overcome--a face which must have been a living reproof to the
butterfly sybarites of Charles the Second's Court. Ida knew no more of
Sir Tristram's history than that he had been a brave soldier and a
faithful servant of the Stuarts in evil and good fortune; that he had
married somewhat late in life, to become the father of an only son, from
whom the present race of Wendovers were descended. Ida had tried in vain
to discover any resemblance to this pictured face in the Colonel or his
sister; but it was only to be supposed that the characteristics of the
loyal knight had dwindled and vanished from the Wendover countenance with
the passage of two centuries.