“You mean Annette Van Elstine? Did you know she was my cousin?”
“Of course! Didn’t she bring you?”
“Bring me?” I stammered. “Bring me—where?”
“Why, to our house!”
“When?”
“The time we’re talking about—when you upset Mrs. Sillinger’s coffee and
broke the cup.”
It is difficult to say whether I was relieved or not. I could only
falter, “I—I don’t believe I’m the man.”
She came back two or three steps toward me.
“Why, of course you’re the man! Isn’t your name Melbury?”
“Yes—but—but I’m not the only Melbury. Could it have been my—my brother,
Jack?”
“What’s your name?”
“Frank.”
She gazed at me a minute before saying: “Then—then I think it must have
been—your brother. I remember now that Annette did call him Jack.” She
continued, “But what did you mean when—when you said it was you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea.”
“Look at me again.”
“I can’t look at you again, because I’m looking at you all the time.
You’re most wonderfully like your brother.”
“I don’t think I am. I met my uncle Van Elstine in the street the other
day and he didn’t know me.”
“Oh, well, strangers often see resemblances that escape members of a
family. All I get by looking at you is that I see your brother. He was
awfully nice. We so—we so wished he’d come back. He—he wasn’t like
everybody else.”
“He’s married now.”
I wonder if I am right in thinking that a slight shadow crossed her face.
There may have been, too, a forced jauntiness in her tone as she said,
“Oh, is he?”