‘H’m,’ she said at last. ‘There’s no mistaking _you_. It’s Mary’s chin, and Mary’s brow—with just a little something, perhaps, of her dreamy eye. But you haven’t all her looks, Mr Lawford, by any manner of means. She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, so fanciful—it was, I suppose the foreign strain showing itself. Even marriage did not quite succeed in spoiling her.’ ‘The foreign strain?’ Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at the quiet old figure. ‘The foreign strain?’ Your mother’s maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does not deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. _That_, I believe, is a foreign name.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest again. ‘Van der Gucht, of course. I—how stupid of me!’ ‘As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But there,’ she flung out little fin-like sleeves, ‘if you don’t let me keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn’t,’ she added even more fretfully, ‘you didn’t tell me the time.’ Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without replying. ‘It’s a few minutes to ten,’ he said at last. ‘Dear me! And I’m keeping the cabman! I must hurry on. Well, now, I put it to you; you shall be my father confessor—though I detest the idea in real life—was I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor fellow that I detected a likeness when there was extremely little likeness there?’ ‘What! None at all!’ cried Lawford; ‘not the faintest trace?’ ‘My dear good Mr Lawford,’ she expostulated, patting her lap, ‘there’s very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary in _you_, her own son. How could there be—how could you expect it in him, a complete stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might have been Mary’s son for all that I could recollect. I haven’t for years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from _you_. I am firmly of opinion that I was justified. My motive was entirely benevolent. And then—to my positive amazement—well, I won’t say hard things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a “Thank you, Miss Bennett.” Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won’t agree that I had any justification in being vexed and—and affronted at _that_.’ ‘I think, Miss Sinnet,’ said Lawford solemnly, ‘that you were perfectly justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for—for the stranger.’ ‘Well, candidly,’ said Miss Sinnett severely. ‘I was very much scandalised; and I shouldn’t be here now telling you my story if it hadn’t been for your mother.’ ‘My mother!’