‘Good,’ said Mr Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated ‘good.’ ‘Now there’s only one thing left,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘I have jotted down a few test questions here; they are questions no one on this earth could answer but you, Lawford. They are merely for external proofs. You won’t, you can’t, mistake my motive. We cannot foretell or foresee what need may arise for just such jog-trot primitive evidence. I propose that you now answer them here, in writing.’ Lawford stood up and walked to the looking-glass, and paused. He put his hand to his head, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course; it’s a rattling good move. I’m not quite awake; myself, I mean. I’ll do it now.’ He took out a pencil case and tore another leaf from his pocket-book. ‘What are they?’ Mr Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal sunshine at her husband, and her husband with a quiet strange smile looked across through the sunshine at his wife. Mr Bethany waited in vain. ‘I am just going to put the arch-impostor through his credentials,’ he said tartly. ‘Now then, Lawford!’ He read out the questions, one by one, from his crafty little list, pursing his lips between each; and one by one, Lawford, seated at the dressing-table, fluently scribbled his answers. Then question and answer were rigorously compared by Mr Bethany, with small white head bent close and spectacles poised upon the powerful nose, and signed and dated, and passed to Mrs Lawford without a word. Mrs Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete silence. She looked up. ‘Many of these questions I don’t know the answers to myself,’ she said. ‘It is immaterial,’ said Mr Bethany. ‘One answer is—is inaccurate. ‘Yes, yes, quite so: due to a mistake in a letter from myself.’ Mrs Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out between finger and thumb. ‘The—handwriting...’ she remarked very softly. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Mr Bethany warmly; ‘all the general look and run of the thing different, but every real essential feature unchanged. Now into the envelope. And now a little wax?’ Mrs Lawford stood waiting. ‘There’s a green piece of sealing-wax,’ almost drawled the quiet voice, ‘in the top right drawer of the nest in the study, which old James gave me the Christmas before last.’ He glanced with lowered eyelids at his wife’s flushed cheek. Their eyes met. ‘Thank you,’ she said. When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs Lawford, with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, with his own seal.