“Why, he took after me!” said Miss Stapylton.  “How thoughtful of him, Olaf!”

And Rudolph Musgrave saw the undeniable resemblance.  It gave him a queer sort of shock, too, as he comprehended, for the first time, that the faint blue vein on that lifted arm held Musgrave blood,—­the same blood which at this thought quickened.  For any person guided by appearances, Rudolph Musgrave considered, would have surmised that the vein in question contained celestial ichor or some yet diviner fluid.

“It is true,” he conceded, “that there is a certain likeness.”

“And he is a very beautiful boy,” said Miss Stapylton, demurely.  “Thank you, Olaf; I begin to think you are a dangerous flatterer.  But he is only a boy, Olaf!  And I had always thought of Gerald Musgrave as a learned person with a fringe of whiskers all around his face—­like a centerpiece, you know.”

The colonel smiled.  “This portrait was painted early in life.  Our kinsman was at that time, I believe, a person of rather frivolous tendencies.  Yet he was not quite thirty when he first established his reputation by his monograph upon The Evolution of Marriage.  And afterwards, just prior to his first meeting with Goethe, you will remember—­”

“Oh, yes!” Miss Stapylton assented, hastily; “I remember perfectly.  I know all about him, thank you.  And it was that beautiful boy, Olaf, that young-eyed cherub, who developed into a musty old man who wrote musty old books, and lived a musty, dusty life all by himself, and never married or had any fun at all!  How horrid, Olaf!” she cried, with a queer shrug of distaste.

“I fail,” said Colonel Musgrave, “to perceive anything—­ah—­horrid in a life devoted to the study of anthropology.  His reputation when he died was international.”

“But he never had any fun, you jay-bird!  And, oh, Olaf!  Olaf! that boy could have had so much fun!  The world held so much for him!  Why, Fortune is only a woman, you know, and what woman could have refused him anything if he had smiled at her like that when he asked for it?”

Miss Stapylton gazed up at the portrait for a long time now, her hands clasped under her chin.  Her face was gently reproachful.

“Oh, boy dear, boy dear!” she said, with a forlorn little quaver in her voice, “how could you be so foolish? Didn’t you know there was something better in the world than grubbing after musty old tribes and customs and folk-songs?  Oh, precious child, how could you?”

Gerald Musgrave smiled back at her, ambiguously; and Rudolph Musgrave laughed.  “I perceive,” said he, “you are a follower of Epicurus.  For my part, I must have fetched my ideals from the tub of the Stoic.  I can conceive of no nobler life than one devoted to furthering the cause of science.”

She looked up at him, with a wan smile.  “A barren life!” she said:  “ah, yes, his was a wasted life!  His books are all out-of-date now, and nobody reads them, and it is just as if he had never been.  A barren life, Olaf!  And that beautiful boy might have had so much fun—­Life is queer, isn’t it, Olaf?”