I cast about in my mind how best to tell a part of the truth without revealing all. It was very far from my desire to send them all scampering off to the Aquarium, as they undoubtedly would do if they learned everything. Edith guessed what I was after. 'Are you thinking how much you can keep back? Be fair.' 'I will be fair; what's more, I'll be open too.' Always begin like that when you intend to be as much the other kind of thing as possible. 'I'll put you in possession of all the information I have in a single sentence. The other day I saw a man who was Twickenham's living image.' They had gathered round me. I had a dim consciousness that their faces changed colour. With their eyes they seemed to be trying to search me through and through. My statement was followed by a perceptible pause. Then Edith began to question me. 'The other day? When?' 'Yesterday.' 'Yesterday? Then you knew last evening. Mother was right.' 'I did not know. I don't know now. It seems incredible that two men could be so much alike, but, on the other hand, it seems equally incredible that, under the circumstances, it could have been he.' 'Under the circumstances? What were the circumstances?' 'That I decline to say. I must ask you to take my word for it that the circumstances under which I saw this man make it practically impossible that it could have been he.' 'Did he see you?' 'He did not.' 'Did you try to speak to him?' 'I had no chance.' 'Did you find out where he lives, or anything at all about him?' 'I did this: I found a man who knows him, and who, I have reason to believe, will bring me face to face with him at a very early date.' 'When?' 'I hope that the question of identity will be settled by Tuesday morning.' 'Hope? Is that quite the appropriate word? Because I perceive that it is Twickenham. You see, Douglas, I know you so well.' 'It is because I expected you to take that point of view that I was reluctant to speak: because I'm more than doubtful if the man I saw was Twickenham.' 'I'm not. If it had been any one but you it would have been a different case. But, you know, Douglas, your royal gift of remembering faces. You never confuse one person with another, even if it is a person you only saw for five minutes twenty years ago. If you have seen a man who was so like Twickenham that you would not like to say it was not Twickenham, it was. Reggie won't be Marquis yet.' She leant against the mantel, looking pale. There was something in her attitude which seemed to me condemnatory. I felt ashamed. Reggie threw himself into an arm-chair. 'If it was Twickenham I shall be in a pretty tight fix.' 'We all shall. I shall have to instal Edith in those country lodgings. You will have to marry Mary Magruder. Violet will be Mrs. George Charteris.' 'I shall be nothing of the kind. I wish you wouldn't settle my future in quite such an off-handed fashion. It's not in the best of taste.' 'I certainly shall not marry Mary Magruder.'