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 chimney-piece 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 mast 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