THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
hides. But not one of them appeared thumbed, beloved. On this yacht books had never been a source of amusement, they had never been reckoned as friends; they went with the teak, the gilt, and the Persian rugs. Your real library should be haunted by friendly ghosts; but if there were any ghosts in this one, they were still tight in their tombs. This was a pleasure yacht which the present owner had inherited six years before.
Over the mantel was the portrait of an elderly man. The artist had done what he could to soften the face; but because he was an artist one saw the money-changer in the Temple in the cold, thin lips and repellent eyes. At the other end of the saloon, over the sideboard, was the portrait of a woman. This, too, had been idealized; yet even so one caught the emptiness of the eyes, the vanity and selfishness in the droop of the lips. One was the father and the other was the mother of the young man below.
But he was an old young man. You might have computed his age in eons instead of years. He was thirty-five; and a man should be really young at that age. He was well built, quite graceful when he moved, and undeniably handsome—that is, if you weren't specialized in physiognomy. His eyes were like his father's; but the mother lips of him were hidden under a well-turned mustache.
Norton Colburton was what his parents had made him. We all are, more or less. There is no reason why our immediate progenitors should not
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