“Oh,—oh,—yes,—but this——” She was leaning on the back of one of the stiff arm-chairs and across it openly studying his lineaments. He had distinctive features; a thin, delicate, slightly aquiline nose, a firm well-rounded chin, bold, luminous hazel eyes, with a thick fringe of long straight lashes, a fair complexion not altogether devoid of the concomitant freckles here and there; fine teeth and mobile red lips; and his hair, glowing in the light, for he still held his hat in his hand, was of that rich auburn shade that artists love and that one sees in paintings and seldom elsewhere. “But this——” she continued, “oh,—you are fooling us. Do you think I can forget you so soon when I waltzed ten miles with you last winter, if it were all strung out in a row! This is certainly Randal Ducie.”
He had begun to laugh in enjoyment of her perplexity. “Randal Ducie is not half so good a man,” he protested gaily.
“Les absens ont toujours tort,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney brought herself, uninvited, into the conversation. Not altogether welcome was her interpolation, for the laugh faded from Mr. Ducie’s face and he remembered to resume his hat and to slip his cigar-case into his pocket, as if in preparation to betake himself elsewhere. But if this were his intention it was forestalled by Miss Dean.
“Now, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” she turned vivaciously to that lady, since she had of her own motion entered the discussion, “wouldn’t anybody think this was Randal Ducie?”
“They are much alike, but I saw the difference in a moment,” Mrs. Floyd-Rosney was smiling naturally, graciously, and looking extremely pretty, as her husband, leaning against one of the posts that supported the superstructure of the deck and, smoking with strong long-drawn puffs, watched her with fixed inscrutable eyes.
“Oh, you didn’t,” Miss Dean contradicted gaily. “You couldn’t! The likeness is amazing! Oh, pshaw! it is no likeness. He is guying us. This is Randal Ducie.”
“You are the twin brother of my young friend, Randal Ducie?” Colonel Kenwynton asked, smiling, an old gentleman of the old school, with a courteous manner and a commanding presence. His tall figure still retained the muscular slenderness of his athletic youth and his stately martial carriage; his dense snowy hair, brushed forward to his brow and parted on the side, and also, straight down the back, the white imperial and long military mustachios gave him the look of a portrait of some by-gone celebrity rather than a man of to-day, so had the thought of this fashion perished. His age was frosty but kindly, and the young man responded with covert humor, as if elucidating a mystery.
“Oh, yes, we have always been twins,” he declared.
“How did you know the difference, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney?” demanded Miss Dean.
“I knew it at once,” she replied, still smiling, but the gravity in the eyes of her husband deepened momently as he gazed, silently, motionlessly at her. “I myself don’t know the difference at all,” said the subject of the discussion. “When I am with Ran I feel as if I were looking into a mirror.”