It was one of those marvellous accidental resemblances which every man has met with in the course of his life.
Here was this dead-and-gone beauty of the days of George the Second smiling upon me with the eyes and lips of Philip Sheldon's stepdaughter! Or was it only a delusion of my own?
Was my mind so steeped in the thought of that girl--was my heart so impressed by her beauty, that I could not look upon a fair woman's face without conjuring up her likeness in the pictured countenance?
However this may be, I looked long and tenderly at the face which seemed to me to resemble the woman I love.
Of course I questioned the rector as to the original of this particular miniature.

He could tell me nothing about it, except that he thought it was not one of the Caulfields or Haygarths.

The man in the full-bottomed Queen-Anne wig was Jeremiah Caulfield, brewer, father of the pious Rebecca; the woman with the high powdered head was the pious Rebecca herself; the man in the George-the-Second wig was Matthew Haygarth.

The other three were kindred of Rebecca's.

But the wild-haired damsel was some unknown creature, for whose presence Mr.
Wendover was unable to account.
I examined the frame of the miniature, and found that it opened at the back.