I looked where she was pointing.
“Him? Who?” I asked.
“Look! There he goes now. No, he's gone. I can't see him any more. And yet I was almost certain 'twas him.”
“Who?” I asked again. “Did you see someone you knew?”
“I thought I did, but I guess I was mistaken. He's just got home; he wouldn't be startin' off again so soon. No, it couldn't have been him, but I did think—”
I stopped short. “Who did you think you saw?” I demanded.
“I thought I saw Doctor Herbert Bayliss goin' up those stairs to the steamboat. It looked like him enough to be his twin brother, if he had one.”
I did not answer. I looked about as we stepped aboard the boat, but if young Bayliss was there he was not in sight. Hephzy rattled on excitedly.
“You can't tell much by seein' folks's backs,” she declared. “I remember one time your cousin Hezekiah Knowles—You don't remember him, Hosy; he died when you was little—One time Cousin Hezzy was up to Boston with his wife and they was shoppin' in one of the big stores. That is, Martha Ann—the wife—was shoppin' and he was taggin' along and complainin', same as men generally do. He was kind of nearsighted, Hezzy was, and when Martha was fightin' to get a place in front of a bargain counter he stayed astern and kept his eyes fixed on a hat she was wearin'. 'Twas a new hat with blue and yellow flowers on it. Hezzy always said, when he told the yarn afterward, that he never once figured that there could be another hat like that one. I saw it myself and, if I'd been in his place, I'd have HOPED there wasn't anyway. Well, he followed that hat from one counter to another and, at last, he stepped up and said, 'Look here, dearie,' he says—They hadn't been married very long, not long enough to get out of the mushy stage—'Look here, dearie,' he says, 'hadn't we better be gettin' on home? You'll tire those little feet of yours all out trottin' around this way.' And when the hat turned around there was a face under it as black as a crow. He'd been followin' a darkey woman for ten minutes. She thought he was makin' fun of her feet and was awful mad, and when Martha came along and found who he'd taken for her she was madder still. Hezzy said, 'I couldn't help it, Martha. Nobody could. I never saw two craft look more alike from twenty foot astern. And she wears that hat just the way you do.' That didn't help matters any, of course, and—Why, Hosy, where are you goin'? Why don't you say somethin'? Hadn't we better sit down? All the good seats will be gone if we don't.”
I had been struggling through the crowd, trying my best to get a glimpse of the man she had thought to be Herbert Bayliss. If it was he then my suspicions were confirmed. Heathcroft's story of the girl who sang in Paris had impressed him as it had me and he was on his way to see for himself. But the man, whoever he might be, had disappeared.