“I should not tell you if I did not have full confidence.” Then she was silent for a minute. “That man,” she continued at last, with a shudder in her voice, “that man was Mr. Knapp's brother.”
I suppressed an exclamation, and she continued:
“They have little in common, even in looks. I wonder you thought for a moment that he was Mr. Knapp. Few people who know them both have traced a resemblance.”
“Perhaps those who do not know them would be more likely to find the common points,” I suggested. “Members of a family see only the difference that marks one of them from another. The stranger at first sees the family type in all and notes the differences later.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Knapp. “It's like picking out the Chinamen. At first they are all alike. We see only the race type. Afterward, we see the many and marked differences.”
“I think,” said I, leading back to the main subject, “that the remarkable circumstances under which I had seen Mr. Lane had a good deal to do with the illusion. This morning, for the first time, I saw his face under full light and close at hand.”
Mrs. Knapp nodded. Then she continued:
“Mr. Knapp and his brother parted thirty years ago in Ohio. The brother—the man who has just gone—was younger than Mr. Knapp, though he looked older. He was wild in his youth. When he left home it was in the night, and for some offense that would have brought him within reach of the law. Mr. Knapp never told me what it was and I never asked. For fifteen years nothing was heard of him. Mr. Knapp and I married, we had come to San Francisco, and he was already a rising man in the city. One day this man came. He had drifted to the coast in some lawless enterprise, and by chance found his brother.”
Mrs. Knapp paused.
“And at once began to live off of him, I suppose,” I threw in as an encouragement to proceed.