Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/263

Rh had sat before the original in Munich. But he wondered how he was going to tell her.

Her questioning eye, in fact, was already on his face. So after deliberately prolonging his study he merely nodded his head.

"The next, please," he said with judicial matter-of-factness.

"This is one of the Constables," she quietly told him, catching her cue from that achieved impersonality of his.

His heart went down as he examined it, for it stood a confirmation of his earlier fears. The canvas in front of him was a copy, and nothing more. It was a much cleverer copy than the first one. But that scarcely excused the effrontery of the forgery, for the painting was signed. On the frame, too, was a lettered medallion, soberly attempting to authenticate it as a Constable.

"This was your father's collection, was it not?" he asked the girl.

"Yes," she told him.

"And he was an artist as well as a collector?"

She shook her head.