Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/280

270 first gone to buy one of West's portraits of Shelley."

"Where is that letter?" asked Conkling.

"My aunts burned it four or five years ago. They saw nothing in it but what was discreditable, and destroyed it along with the other things of father's which they wanted out of existence."

"The fools!" he cried with a sudden hot resentment.

"What father wrote about it costing him so much in worry and work used to make me wonder if he had copied it at some time with his own hand. I tried to believe that, and it made me prouder of him."

Conkling shook his head.

"You were wrong there," he said. "That canvas has got what you can't copy. The secret of it slipped away from the world over three centuries ago. And no one has ever got within speaking distance of it again."

Slowly she moved her head up and down, as though consoled by some final confirmation of a long doubtful issue. A faint tinge of color even crept back into her face, and