Under the roof at Rivenoak was an attic which no one ever entered.

The last person who had done so was Sir Quentin Ogram; on a certain day in eighteen hundred and--something, the baronet locked the door and put key into his pocket, and during the more than forty years since elapsed the room had remained shut.

It guarded neither treasure nor dire secret; the hidden contents were merely certain essays in the art of sculpture, sundry shapes in clay and in marble, the work of Sir Quentin himself when a very young man.

Only one of these efforts had an abiding interest; it was a marble bust representing a girl, or young woman, of remarkable beauty, the head proudly poised, the eyes disdainfully direct, on the lips a smile which seemed to challenge the world's opinion.

Not a refined or nobly suggestive face, but stamped with character, alive with vehement self-consciousness; a face to admire at a distance, not without misgiving as one pictured the flesh and blood original.