A Silver Brand — page 211: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. a a A SILVER BRAND. $03 years had gathered upon it now, but it was still full of suggestive eloquence. Boast Had it thrilled to life to drop a ghostly touch claiming him as a scion of the proud old line? Aubrey walked on with less of the air of a thief and intruder. The gallery door was not fastened Something in the fine thrill of nervous expectancy that tingled throughout his whole frame had already assured him that it would not be. He pushed it open, and walked into the blackness there unhesitatingly. Then bethinking himself of possible in- trusion, he went back and closed it, and lighting the taper, which shed but a feeble gleam in the long dark gallery, he began at the:door, and went slowly and deliberately from picture to picture, studying the lineaments of each with careful scrutiny, but all the while conscious of the subtle, magnetic attraction that was drawing him toward the other end of the long and silent row. His eye deepened and dilated, his heart beat faster, his breath caught little convulsive gasps as he neared at length the vailed portraits. It almost seemed like lifting a coffin lid when his trembling fingers seized the black cloth and flung up the curtain. The last baron,the true eldest son, and Lady Fauline, his wife. Hapless couple, whose brilliant prospects had been cut off in such. untimely and woeful fashion. Wistfully, imploringly Aubrey’s eyes sought those that © looked forth from the canvas with such wonderful intel- ligence and life-like power. Oh, for the power to call back speech and vitality! He sighed heavily. Did an- other sigh seem to answer, floating past him like a ghostly breath ? He turned his head quickly. Something was near him. He knew it—he felt it. But where and what? He looked around him, and saw nothing but the flickering light from his taper playing along the double row of gilded frames and canvas faces.. The carved groins of the eleb- orate ceiling rose silently above him, the mosaic floor shone clear and empty around him. He stood there alone, the only living creature amid all the pictured life, the only animate thing with power to move and stir. Nay, even while he gazed and rubbed his eyes as if to disperse an illusion of vision, the great, gilded frame of the pictured knight opposite him stirred. By. Good heavens! franie and picture both moved forward. —seemed to advance toward him. <A cold current of air extinguished the tiny Hame of his taper, | phe Eomicbooks.cor