“The person I saw was a lady,” said Lady Gwendolyn. “That is a point upon which it was impossible for me to be deceived, of course. She was unusually delicate and refined looking, and her accent was perfect. Your protégée in the village could never have managed to play the lady so well.”
“I don’t know about that. Mad people are very cunning and imitative.”
“Still, they cannot perform impossibilities. Let her imitation have been ever so good, she must have betrayed herself in some way.”
“If you had suspected her, you would have perceived certain deficiencies that passed unnoticed under the circumstances.”
“Impossible. I knew nothing whatever about her, and was ready to believe anything. The impression she made on me was, as I said before, of an extremely refined, lady-like person, and I have no doubt in my own mind that she was a gentlewoman, and your wife.”
“She may have been a gentlewoman, but she was certainly not my wife,” replied the colonel.
“Will you swear that?”
“I will swear by my mother’s memory—which I love and revere—that I never had a wife.”
“Will you swear also that you do not know the lady I have been describing?”
“No; for I did not see her.”