"Why, I told you, dear, that I don't know," her husband protested. "I told you weeks ago, after your mother made that scene, the night of Hendrick's speech, that I couldn't make head or tail of it!" "Chris"--Alice was regarding him fixedly--"you _must_ know!" "Dearest, couldn't your mother simply wish to befriend a girl whose parents----" Alice flung her loosened hair back, and at her gesture and her glance at the little carafe on her table he poured her a glass of cold water. Drinking it off, and raising herself in her cushions, she stretched her hand to touch the chair beside her, and still without a word indicated that he was to take it. With a face of grave concern Christopher sat down beside her, holding her hands in both his own. "Chris," she said, clearly and quickly, if with occasional catches of breath, "the minute that girl came into the room I knew that--I knew that _horror_ had come upon us all! I knew that she was one of us--one of us Melroses, somehow----" "Alice!" he said, pleadingly. "But Mama," she said, with a keen look, "didn't tell you that?" "She told me only what I told you that night, on my honour as a gentleman! Alice, what makes you say what you do?" "Ah, Chris," his wife cried, almost frantically, "look at her! _Look_ at her! Why, her voice is Annie's, the same identical voice--she looks like my father, like Theodore--she looks like us all! She and Leslie were so much alike, as they sat there, in spite of the colouring, that I almost screamed it at them! Surely--surely, you see it--everyone sees it!" He stared at her, beginning to breathe a little quickly in his turn. "By George!" she heard him whisper, as if to himself. "Do you see it, Chris?" Alice whispered, almost fearfully. "But--but----" He got up and walked restlessly to the window, and came back to sit down again. "But there's a cousinship somewhere," he said, sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can't be explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear. What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls----" His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly. "Mama felt it--saw it--as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that Mama wouldn't have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something had given her cause!" They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the lovely, cool-toned room. "Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your mother told me--all that I know!" "Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!" Her husband's slow colour rose. "How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly. Alice was unhappily silent. "Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of--what I fear," she said, presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to speak of it--never even to think of it!--if it--if it proves not to be true?"