af she couldn't hear you if she were awake. You need only
take one glance and nod your head if she looks like the other. It is very
desirable that none of us should speak. The case is a mysterious one and
there's enough talk about it already without the women hiding and
listening behind every shut door you see, adding their gossip to the
rest."

A knowing look, a twitch at the corners of a good-natured mouth, and the
man followed them down the hall, past one or two of the doors alluded to,
till they reached the one against the panel of which Mr. Ransom had
already laid his ear.

"Still asleep," his gesture seemed to signify; and with a word of caution
he led the way in.

The room was very dark. Mrs. Deo had been careful to draw down the shade
when she put her strange charge to bed, and at this first moment of
entrance it was impossible for them to see more than the outline of a
dark head upon a snowy pillow. But gradually, feature by feature of the
sleeping woman's countenance became visible, and the lawyer, turning his
acute gaze on the man from whose recognition he expected so much,
impatiently awaited the nod which was to settle their doubt.

But that nod did not come, not even after Mr. Ransom, astonished at the
long pause, turned on the stranger his own haggard and inquiring eyes.
Instead, Mr. Goodenough lifted a blank stare to either face beside him,
and, shaking his head, stumbled awkwardly back in an endeavor to leave
the room. Mr. Ransom, taken wholly by surprise, uttered some peremptory
ejaculation, but a glance from the lawyer quieted him, and not till they
were all shut up again in that convenient room at the head of the stairs
did any of the three speak.

And not even then without an embarrassed pause. Both the lawyer and his
unhappy client had a deep and, in the case of the latter, a heartrending
disappointment to overcome, and the clock on the stairs ticked out
several seconds before the lawyer ventured to remark:

"Miss Hazen's face is quite new to you, I perceive. Evidently it was not
her twin sister you met on the high road this morning."

"Nor anything like her," protested the man. "A different face entirely;
prettier and more saucy. Such a gal as a man like me would be glad to
call darter."

"Oh, I see!" assented the lawyer. Then with the instinctive caution of
his class, "You have made no mistake?"

"Not a bit of a one," emphasized the other. "Sorry I can't give the
gentleman any hope, bu