His expression softened as his eyes moved
to the child.
"Who 'ave ye brought?" he asked. He removed his spectacles. "Ah!" He
rose, and offered the author a chair. At the same moment, the women
entered the room.
"Of course you've fallen in love with Blanche, sir," said one of them.
"Everybody does."
"Yes, that is it. Quite so." Confusion still prevailing among his
faculties, he clung to the naked truth. "This little girl has interested
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.
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