ed death."

"That I can say nothing about," rejoined Ransom in answer to this feeler.
"The will is in the hands of her lawyer, but if it will help your
argument any we will suppose that she left her sister to the care of her
friends without any especial provision for her in the way of money."

The steady fingers clutching the scarred neck loosed their grip to wave
this supposition aside.

"A hardly supposable case," was the cold comment with which he
supplemented this disclaimer; "but one which would make the girl a burden
indeed; a burden which for many reasons I could not assume." Here he
struck himself sharply on the neck, with the first display of passion he
had shown. "My advantages are not such as to make it easy for me to
support myself. It would be simply impossible for me to undertake the
care of any girl, least of all of one with a manifest infirmity."

"Anitra will prosper without your care," replied Ransom, overlooking the
heartlessness of the man in the mad, unaccountable sense of relief with
which he listened to his withdrawal from concerns for which he showed so
little sympathy. "There are others who will be glad to do all that can be
done for Georgian's forsaken sister."

"Yes. That is all right, but--" Here Hazen squared himself across the top
of the table before which he had been sitting; "I must be made sure that
the facts have been rightly represented to me and that the girl now in
this house _is_ Georgian's deserted sister. I'm not yet satisfied that
she is, and I must be convinced not only on this point but on many
others, before this day is over. Business of great importance calls me
back to the city and, it may be, out of the country. I may never be able
to spend another day on purely personal affairs, so this one must tell. I
have a scheme (it is a very simple one) which, if carried out as I have
planned, will satisfy me as nothing else will as to the identity of the
girl we will call, from lack of positive knowledge, Anitra. Will you help
me in its furtherance? It lies with you to do so."

"First, your reasons for doubting the girl," retorted Ransom. "They must
be excellent ones for you to resist the evidence of such conclusive
proofs as you have yourself been witness to since entering this house. I
am Georgian's husband. I have the strongest wish in the world to see her
again at my side; yet with the exception of her wonderful likeness to my
wife, I find nothing in this raw if beautiful g