I tried bluff once more, though it doesn’t come easily to me. I looked him straight in the face and said deliberately:
“I don’t quite understand you, Lord Southbourne. That lady at the Hotel Cecil was Miss Anne Pendennis, a friend of my cousin, Mrs. Cayley. Do you know her?”
“Well—no.”
“Then who on earth made you think she was the original of that portrait?”
“Cayley the dramatist; he’s your cousin’s husband, isn’t he? I showed the portrait to him, and he recognized it at once.”
This was rather a facer, and I felt angry with Jim!
“Oh, Jim!” I said carelessly. “He’s almost as blind as a mole, and he’s no judge of likenesses. Why he always declares that Gertie Millar’s the living image of Edna May, and he can’t tell a portrait of one from the other without looking at the name (this was quite true, and we had often chipped Jim about it). There was a superficial likeness of course; I saw it myself at the time.”
“You didn’t mention it.”
“Why, no, I didn’t think it necessary.”
“And the initials?”