“What was the riddle?” smiled Lawford.
“Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I surmised, by some very faint resemblance in his face to his mother, who was, he assured me, an old schoolfellow of mine at Brighton. I thought and thought. I confess the adventure was beginning to be a little perplexing. But of course, very, very few of my old schoolfellows remain distinctly in my memory now; and I fear that grows more treacherous the longer I live. Their faces as girls are clear enough. But later in life most of them drifted out of sight—many, alas, are dead; and, well, at last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do you suppose that was?”
Lawford sustained an expression of abysmal mystification. “Do tell me—who?”
“Your own poor dear mother, Mr. Lawford.”
“He said so?”
“No, no,” said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her eyes. “I said so. He asked me to guess. And I guessed Mary Lawford; now do you see?”
“Yes, yes. But was he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really very, very extraordinary. Did you see any likeness in his face?”
Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their case again. “Now, see here, sir; this is being practical, isn’t it? I’m just going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you mustn’t let me forget the time. You must look after the time for me.”
“It’s about a quarter to ten,” said Lawford, having glanced first at the stopped clock on the chimneypiece and then at his watch. He then sat quite still and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the old lady lifted her bonneted head and ever so gravely and benignly surveyed him.
“H’m,” she said at last. “There’s no mistaking you. It’s Mary’s chin, and Mary’s brow—with just a little something, perhaps, of her dreamy eye. But you haven’t all her looks, Mr. Lawford, by any manner of means. She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, so fanciful—it was, I suppose the foreign strain showing itself. Even marriage did not quite succeed in spoiling her.”
“The foreign strain?” Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at the quiet old figure. “The foreign strain?”
“Your mother’s maiden name, my dear Mr. Lawford, surely memory does not deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. That, I believe, is a foreign name.”
“Ah, yes,” said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest again. “Van der Gucht, of course. I—how stupid of me!”
“As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But there,” she flung out little fin-like sleeves, “if you don’t let me keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn’t,” she added even more fretfully, “you didn’t tell me the time.”
Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without replying. “It’s a few minutes to ten,” he said at last.
“Dear me! And I’m keeping the cabman! I must hurry on. Well, now, I put it to you; you shall be my father confessor—though I detest the idea in real life—was I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor fellow that I detected a likeness when there was extremely little likeness there?”
“What! None at all!” cried Lawford; “not the faintest trace?”
“My dear good Mr. Lawford,” she expostulated, patting her lap, “there’s very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary in you, her own son. How could there be—how could you expect it in him, a complete stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might have been Mary’s son for all that I could recollect. I haven’t for years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from you. I am firmly of opinion that I was justified. My motive was entirely benevolent. And then—to my positive amazement—well, I won’t say hard things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a ‘Thank you, Miss Bennett.’ Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won’t agree that I had any justification in being vexed and—and affronted at that.”
“I think, Miss Sinnet,” said Lawford solemnly, “that you were perfectly justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for—for the stranger.”
“Well, candidly,” said Miss Sinnett severely. “I was very much scandalised; and I shouldn’t be here now telling you my story if it hadn’t been for your mother.”
“My mother!”
The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. “Yes, Mr. Lawford, your mother. I don’t know why—something in his manner, something in his face—so dejected, so unhappy, so—if it is not uncharitable to say it—so wild: it has haunted me: I haven’t been able to put the matter out of my mind. I have lain awake in my bed thinking of him. Why did he speak to me, I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very aimless a trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary and so dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of him? A little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps—what might I not have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and distressed me more than I can say. Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on one occasion, three times in a day made my way to the seat—hoping to see him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown all, I had a most remarkable dream about your mother. But that’s my own
