u get that wound
on your forehead?"

"I've had some lively times one way and another, dear; but never mind
about that now," I said. We were sitting together by the fire in the
drawing-room, after dinner, alone,--for Mary had effaced herself like
the considerate little woman she is; probably she had joined Jim and
Pendennis in the smoking-room, that was also Jim's sanctum.

"Tell me about yourself. How did you get to Petersburg? It was you?"

"Yes; but I can't remember even now how I got there," she answered,
frowning at the fire, and biting her underlip. A queer thrill ran
through me as I watched her; she was so like that other.

"I got into the train at Calais, and I suppose I fell asleep; I was very
tired after the dinner at the Cecil and Mrs. Sutherland's party. There
were two other people in the same carriage,--a man and a woman. That's
the last thing I can recollect clearly until I found myself again in a
railway carriage. I've a confused notion of being on board ship in
between; but it was all like a dream, until I suddenly saw you, and
called out to you; I was in an open carriage then, driving through a
strange city that I know now was Petersburg. I was taken to a house
where several horrid men--quite superior sort of men in a way, but they
seemed as if they hated me, and I couldn't think why--asked me a lot of
questions. At first they spoke in a language I didn't understand at all,
but afterwards in French; and then I found they wanted to know about
that Mr. Cassavetti; they called him by another name, too--"

"Selinski," I said.

"Yes, that was it; though I haven't been able to remember it. They
wouldn't believe me when I said I'd only met him quite casually at
dinner, the night before I was kidnapped,--for I really was kidnapped,
Maurice--and that I knew nothing whatever about him. They kept me in a
dark cell for hours, till I was half-crazy with anger and terror; and
then they brought me out, and I saw you, and father; and the next thing
I knew I was in bed in an hotel we've often stayed at, in Berlin. Father
tries to persuade me that I imagined the whole thing; but I didn't; now
did I, Maurice? And what does it all mean?"

"It was all a mistake. You were taken for some one else; some one whom
you resemble very closely."

"That's just what I thought; though father won't believe it; or he
pretends he won't; but I am sure he knows something that he will not
tell me. But there's another thing,--that dre