When he saw whom it represented he seemed both amused and startled, and after scanning it a while handed it to the young man with a queer smile.
'I am very sorry,' began Dare in a low voice to Mr.Power.

'I fear I was to blame for thoughtlessness in not destroying it.

But I thought it was rather funny that a man should permit such a thing to be done, and that the humour would redeem the offence.' 'In you, for purchasing it,' said Paula with haughty quickness from the other side of the room.

'Though probably his friends, if he has any, would say not in him.' There was silence in the room after this, and Dare, finding himself rather in the way, took his leave as unostentatiously as a cat that has upset the family china, though he continued to say among his apologies that he was not aware Mr.Somerset was a personal friend of the ladies.
Of all the thoughts which filled the minds of Paula and Charlotte De Stancy, the thought that the photograph might have been a fabrication was probably the last.

To them that picture of Somerset had all the cogency of direct vision.