"Doctor Britten considers that your brain is unbalanced, because you do not know the truth," she said calmly. "I quite agree with him." "He's a fool--a drivelling idiot," I cried, forgetting myself in the heat of the moment, and using an unwriteable word. Mention of that pottering old fossil's name was to me as a red rag to a bull. "I surely know who and what I am!" I cried. "No, my dear Wilford, that's just it. You don't know who you are," the woman answered with a smile. "Oh!" I exclaimed. "Then perhaps you'll kindly inform me. All this may be very amusing to you, but I assure you that to me it's the very reverse." "I can only tell you who you are as I know you to be," answered the powdered-faced, doll-like old lady, whose attempts at juvenile coquetry sickened me. "Go on," I said, preparing myself for more attempts to befool me. "I ask you first whether you are not Wilford Heaton, of Heaton Manor, near Tewkesbury?" "Certainly." "And you were once stricken by blindness?" "That is so, unfortunately." "And you are now carrying on business as a financier in the City of London?" "I know nothing of finance," I answered. "This Mr Gedge--or whatever his name is--has told me some absurd fairy tale about my position in London, but knowing myself, as I do, to be an arrant duffer at figures, I'm quite positive that the story is all bunkum." "Then how do you account for these memorandum forms?" inquired Gedge, taking some from the table, "and for these letters? Are they not in your handwriting?" I glanced at the letters he held. They referred to some huge financial transaction, and were certainly in a hand that appeared wonderfully like my own. "Some one has been imposing upon you, I tell you. This is a case of mistaken identity--it must be, my dear sir." "But I tell you it isn't," protested Gedge. "All that your wife has said is the absolute truth." "My wife!" I cried angrily. "I have no wife--thank Heaven!" "No, no," whined the painted old woman, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, very lightly, however, so as not to disturb their artificiality. "No, don't say that, my dear Wilfred, don't say that! You know that you are my husband--you know you are!" "I know, my dear madam, quite well that I do not occupy that distinguished position," I responded very firmly. "But I can prove it--I can prove it!" she cried, with a futile effort at tears. "Then I shall be most interested to see this extraordinary fiction proved," I said. "Perhaps we shall then get down to facts." "The facts are as already stated," Gedge remarked. "Then let me see proof. There must be a certificate or official entry somewhere if what this lady says is really correct. Where is it?" "My certificate was stolen when my jewel-case was rifled in the train between Waterloo and Exeter," she answered. "But, of course, a copy can easily be obtained. Your solicitor in London can get a copy at once from Somerset House."