He took it from the table and handed it me.

He took it from the table and handed it me. It, too, was a photograph, a great deal smaller, in a thin oval wooden frame--it was the face of a young girl, thin and consumptive, and at the same time very good-looking; dreamy and yet strangely lacking in thought. The features were regular, of the type suggesting the pampering of generations, but it left a painful impression: it looked as though some fixed idea had taken possession of this creature and was torturing her, just because it was too much for her strength. "That . . . that is the girl you meant to marry and who died of consumption . . . HER step-daughter?" I said rather timidly. "Yes, I meant to marry her, she died of consumption, HER step- daughter. I knew that you knew . . . all that gossip. Though you could have known nothing about it but the gossip. Put the portrait down, my boy, that was a poor, mad girl and nothing more." "Really mad?" "Or imbecile; I think she was mad though. She had a child by Prince Sergay. It came about through madness not through love; it was one of Prince Sergay's most scoundrelly actions. The child is here now in the next room, and I've long wanted to show it to you. Prince Sergay has never dared come here to look at the child; that was the compact I made with him abroad. I took the child to bring up with your mother's permission. With your mother's permission I meant at the time to marry that unhappy creature . . ." "Could such permission have been possible?" I protested warmly. "Oh yes, she allowed it: jealousy could only have been felt of a woman, and that was not a woman." "Not a woman to anyone but mother! I shall never in my life believe that mother was not jealous!" I cried.