Appearance! Ah, I hadn't yet thought of that.
"Why," I exclaimed, "the two are not in the least alike, physically!"
"Miss Van Allen wore a black wig," said Stone. "A most cleverly constructed one, and she rouged her cheeks, penciled her eyelashes and reddened her lips to produce the high coloring that marked her from Mrs. Schuyler."
I thought this over, dully. Yes, they were the same height and weight, they had the same slight figure, but it had never occurred to me to compare their physical effects. I was a bit near-sighted and I had never taken enough real personal interest in Vicky to learn to love her features as I had Ruth's.
"You see," Fleming Stone was saying, though I scarce listened, "you are the only person that I have been able to find who knows both Miss Van Allen and Mrs. Schuyler. No one else has testified who knows them both. So much depends on you."
"You'll get nothing from me!" I fairly shouted. "They're not the same woman at all. You're all wrong, you and your lying boy there!"
"Your vehemence stultifies your own words," said Stone, quietly; "it proves your own realization of the truth and your anger and fury at that realization. I don't blame you. I know your regard for Mrs. Schuyler, I know you have always been a friend of Miss Van Allen. It is not strange that one woman attracts you, since the other did. But you've got to face this thing, so be a man and look at it squarely. I'll help you all I can, but I assure you there's nothing to be gained by denial of the self-evident truth."
"But, man," I said, trying to be calm, "the whole thing is impossible! How could Mrs. Randolph Schuyler, a well-known society lady, live a double life and enact Miss Van Allen, a gay butterfly girl? How could she get from one house to the other unobserved? Why wouldn't her servants know of it, even if her family didn't? How could she hoodwink her husband, her sisters-in-law, and her friends? Why didn't people see her leaving one house and entering the other? Why wasn't she missed from one house when she was in the other?"
"All answerable questions," said Stone. "You know Miss Van Allen went away frequently on long trips, and was in and out of her home all the time. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, as every one testifies who knew her."
This was true enough. Vicky was never at home more than a few days at a time and then absent for a week or so. Where? In the Fifth Avenue house as Ruth Schuyler? Incredible! Preposterous! But as I began to believe at last, true.