e was doing what we used to do, trying to detect a resemblance. Now,
if we in all these years with the boys, constantly watching their ways
and listening to their voices, could detect no resemblance, it is
extremely improbable that she was able to do so from merely seeing them
a score of times walking in the streets. I do not say that it is
impossible she could have done so; I only say it is extremely
improbable; and I think it much more likely that, finding she could see
no resemblance whatever, she determined to speak to the first whom she
might happen to find alone."

"But there is the mark, father," Rupert said.

"Yes, there is the mark," Mrs. Clinton repeated.

"I did not know you had a mark, Rupert. I wonder we never noticed it,
Lucy."

"It is a very tiny one, father. I never noticed it myself--indeed I can
hardly see it before a glass, for it is rather at the back of the
shoulder--until Edgar noticed it one day. It is not larger than the head
of a good-sized pin. It is a little dark-brown mole. Perhaps it was
smaller and lighter when I was a baby; but it must have been there then,
or she would not have known about it."

"That is so, Rupert; but the mere fact that it is there does not in any
way prove that you are our son. Just see what Edgar says about it in his
letter. Remember the woman could not have known which of you boys had
the mark; and that she did not know, that is to say, that she had not
recognized the likeness, appears from Edgar's letter. This is what he
says: 'She said that one of us had a small mole on the shoulder. I knew
that Rupert had a tiny mole there; and she said that was the mark by
which she knew your son from hers.' Suppose Edgar had replied, 'Yes, I
have such a mark on my shoulder,' might she not have said, that is the
mark by which I can distinguish my son from that of Captain Clinton?"

The others were silent. Then Mrs. Clinton said, "You know, Percy, I do
not wish to prove that one more than the other of the boys is ours; but
naturally the woman would wish to benefit her own boy, and if it had
been her own boy who had the mark, why should she not have told Edgar
that she had made a mistake, and that it was Rupert who was her son?"

"I do not suppose, Lucy, that she cared in the slightest which was her
son; her main object, of course, was to extort money. Edgar does not say
anything at all about that; and of course at first she would try and
make out that she was ready to sacri