"Yes!" she replied. "Yes! my poor dear father and dear little Ralph were with her. I was at school at home. Poor papa—poor Ralph." Her eyes became suffused. "Papa and Minnie went abroad for brother Ralph's health. Poor boy, he did not live to get home, and papa died the next year."
It was not right, but I could not resist it. I knew that grief admits a friend more readily than gaiety, so I said: "Yes! Ralph looked very frail, but your father was the picture of health. I was abroad after that for several years and lost sight of them."
She paused a while, and then continued, "dear papa was never sick, but his troubles broke his heart and killed him. You know it was a terrible thing to be cheated of all he possessed by the man he thought his best friend."
I saw she had an idea, I had known her father and of his affairs. I was villain enough not to undeceive her. What is more, I felt I had a right to be free with this girl. I had worshipped her sister for years, and in every land. She and her sister were now become as one, and that one was designed by nature for me.
The child ran up and pulled her hand. "Lets go home, aunt Rita, I am hungry."
She arose, and nodding me a polite good evening, said:
"I suppose you will come to see Minnie. Her house is No. ——. My aunt and I are visiting her."
I promised to do so, and passed a sleepless night, racking my brain to discover some way of getting into No. —— without taking advantage of this sweet girl's unconventional innocence. Could I tell a lie? Would it be a lie to excuse myself on the plea of having a slight acquaintance with the dead father? I lived a lie; was indeed a living lie, but I had as yet to my recollection never uttered a direct one.
On the next day I called, asking for the ladies. I sent in a card with an assumed name and wrote under it, "An acquaintance of years ago." Rita and Mrs. Wilton, her sister, came in together. I stood for several minutes speechless. There were the two sisters. Apparently there was ten years difference in their ages, and the disparity was patent. Yet I looked from one to the other, and for a while was hardly able to determine that it was the elder I had previously met. I hid my confusion. They seemed never to question my having been a friend of their father. Neither evinced the slightest emotion when our eyes met. I had while abroad, the entre of many noble houses. I used this fact as a sort of credential and succeeded so well that Mr. Wilton called at my hotel and invited me to dine with his family.
The visit was repeated; and I was well received. I honored the wife—but loved the young sister. It seemed to me it was she I had been carrying all of these years in my heart; and I did not stop to think what all this might lead to. When I changed my skin in India I became the man I pretended to be. I was the homeless Jack Felden. I was madly infatuated, and what may seem strange, while I trembled when I looked at or touched the younger sister, I felt not a single tremor, when the elder walked to a concert at night with her hand on my arm; not an emotion, when she looked me in the face. I loved her years ago, I loved her sister now because she and her sister had become one, and that one was the younger.