experiencing a very
uncomfortable feeling which was more like apprehension than anything
else. She couldn't think of anything else to say at the moment, and so
she said simply:

"I don't know why you should be grieved, I mean in particular about me.
There are plenty of others like me, you know, a good many thousands in
London alone, I believe, and I suppose you would feel sorry for any of
them. There are lots worse off than I am, I can tell you. But why should
you be sorry for me particularly?"

As she said this she crossed her legs and folded her hands over her
knee, leaning forward slightly and looking keenly at him.

"Because," he replied, with a little quaver in his voice, but looking
steadily into her eyes, "because you are the living image of the woman
who was once my wife. A little over thirty years ago--by the way, may I
ask how old you are?"

"I was eighteen last September," she said, "that is to say, I am getting
on for nineteen."

"And your birthday?" he said. "You will forgive me asking you so many
questions, I know, when I tell you why I ask them; but of course, you
needn't answer them unless you choose."

"There is no reason why I shouldn't," she said, "as far as I know. I was
born on the twentieth of September. What were you going to say?"

"I was going to say that if my wife, I mean I should rather say the
woman who was my wife, could be put beside you now as she was thirty
years ago, dressed as you are now, it would be almost impossible to tell
the difference between you. You told my son, I think, that you take your
name Vane from your mother."

"Yes," replied Miss Carol, "she told me that that was her name. I don't
know whether I was ever really christened or not, but an English
musician in Dresden, one of my mother's friends, called me Carol when I
was quite a little mite of a thing because I was always singing, and as
that was as good a name as any other, I suppose it stuck to me."

"Do you know whether your mother was ever married?"

"She had been, because she used to talk about it and about all she had
lost and all that sort of thing, you know, when she was drunk," replied
Miss Carol with a simple directness which went straight to Sir Arthur's
heart. "Of course, that was when I was quite a little thing, about eight
or nine. Then I was sent to a sort of boarding-school, half a school and
half a convent, and I didn't like that, so I ran away from it, as I told
your son last night."

"I