That evening the lovers looked over some old miniatures of former Floyds and of the Wyldes, from whom the colonel traced his inheritance. In every one of the female faces Lance instinctively hunted for traits that should account for Jessie's features; but he could not find any. Not only was he baffled in the search, but when he retired to rest the old puzzle as to the similarity between Jessie's face and Adela's grew upon him, as more complicated and less easy to shake off than ever.
A few nights afterward his hands clasped Jessie's cheeks as he bade her farewell, on his departure for Beaufort, where he was to take a coast-wise steamer for New York.
It was late October. There was a chill in the air. The leaves of the deciduous trees had turned, and were already falling. The pines were rusty in places, their needles showered to the ground in great numbers; the snow-goose had already been heard piping in the air, on its southward flight; and the waves of the Sound and the sea, as they broke upon the shore, seemed to shiver with a knowledge of approaching winter. But Jessie stood with her lover on the veranda, in the darkness; and her face rested so yieldingly in his palms that Lance half imagined he could carry it away with him. There in the night it was like a picture painted long ago and dimmed by time, yet shining out through the obscurity with its youth and loveliness and passion still intact. No; he could not carry it bodily away with him, but he could take it in his heart; and so he did, holding it there long after the farewell kiss had left his lips.
But after he reached New York, and during the long months of winter, the magic of fancy played strange tricks with the image he had brought in his heart. Strive as he would, he could not prevent it from wavering and flickering, as it were, and occasionally taking on a darker hue, so that he seemed at times to be contemplating Adela, instead of Jessie.
One of the first things he did was to hunt up some old memoranda in which the tradition concerning Guy Wharton was definitely set down. This cleared up his recollection of it; and his next act was to write to a lawyer of his acquaintance in England, who knew something about the Wharton history, asking him to use his best endeavors to get some authentic likeness of Gertrude Wylde.