His answer went off at a tangent. “Christina Alberta’s resemblance to my mother. It’s amazing. It’s been worrying me ever since I came into the room. It’s been distracting my attention. I’ve got a little picture....”
He jumped up and went out of the room. Christina Alberta, puzzled, excited, turned instantly on Lambone. “He knew my father and mother,” she said.
“Apparently,” said Lambone with something defensive in his voice.
“Apparently!” she echoed. “But—he knew them! He knew them well. And—What’s he thinking of?”
Devizes reappeared holding out a small gold-framed picture. “Look at that!” he said and handed it to Paul Lambone. “It might be Christina Alberta. Don’t you see how like it is? Allowing for that preposterous hair piled upon her head and the way her dress goes up round her neck.”
He handed the picture to Christina Alberta and looked at Lambone in amazed interrogation.
“It might be me in fancy dress,” Christina Alberta agreed, with the picture in her hands. There came a long pause. She looked up and saw the expression of his face. Her mind gave a fantastic leap, so fantastic that it instantly leapt back to the point of departure. It was like a flash of lightning in a night as dark as pitch. She made a great effort to pull the conversation together, to behave as though her mind had never leapt at all. “But what has all this to do with my Daddy’s case?” she asked.
“Nothing directly. Your resemblance to my mother is a pure coincidence. Pure. But it’s a curious coincidence! Just for the moment it pulled my attention aside. Forgive me. I’ve a belief that where there’s resemblance of this sort there’s a blood relationship. I suppose your mother’s people—what did you say they were called—Hoskin?”
“Did I say? I don’t remember. I didn’t say. I didn’t. Her name was Hossett.”
“Ah, yes!—Hossett. I suppose that two or three generations back the Hossetts and Devizes intermarried. And there we are! Cousins—at we don’t know what remove. But types go under in a family and then bob up again. It sort of links us, Christina Alberta, doesn’t it? It gives me a special interest. I don’t feel now that you’re just any old patient. Or, rather, just Paul’s friend. I feel linked. Well—That’s that. Let’s come back to your father. Who married your mother just when they were starting the old South African war. He’s always been a dreamy, unobservant type. As we were saying. Even from the beginning....”