name," he said. "My attack at
that time was merely a coincidence. I am subject to these spells of
faintness. I hope this one did not alarm you."

He looked at me directly, as if expecting an answer.

"I am not easily alarmed," I returned, trying hard to keep out of my
voice anything save the indifferent courtesy which one would bestow
upon a stranger, for the atmosphere of mystery seemed deepening about
this stranger and me. I did not believe he had spoken the truth,
when he said that my utterance of my maiden name, in response to his
question, had nothing to do with his faintness. I was as certain as I
was of anything that it was the utterance of that name, the revelation
of my identity thus made to him, that caused his emotion. I sat
thrilled, tense, in anticipation of revelations to follow.

Mr. Gordon's voice was quiet, but a poignant little thrill ran through
it, which I caught as he spoke again.

"Was not your mother's name Margaret Bickett and your father's,
Charles Spencer?" he asked.

"You are quite correct." I forced the words through lips stiffened by
excitement.

I saw Dicky look at me curiously, almost impatiently, but I had no
eyes, no ears, save for the mysterious stranger who was quizzing me
about my parents.

One of Mr. Gordon's hands was beneath the table; as he was sitting
next to his I saw what no one else did--that the long, slender,
sensitive fingers pressed themselves deeply, quiveringly, into the
palm at my affirmation of his question. But except for that momentary
grip there was no evidence of excitement in his demeanor as he turned
to me.

"I thought so," he said quietly. "I have found the daughter of
the dearest friends I ever had. Your resemblance to your mother is
marvelous. I remember that you looked much like her when you were a
tiny girl."

"You were at our home in my childhood, then?" I asked, wondering if
this might be the explanation of my uncanny notion that I had sometime
in my life seen this man bending over his demitasse as he had done a
few minutes before.

"Oh, yes," he said, "your mother, as I have told you, was the dearest
friend I ever had. And your father was my other self--then--"

His emphasis upon the word "then" gave me a quick stab of pain, for
it recalled the odium with which every one who had known my childhood
seemed to regard the memory of my father.

I, myself, had no memories of my father. My mother had never spoken
of him to me but once, when she