"You see it's very odd, those two names," said Sir Jekyl, not minding; "and as you say, the likeness so astonishing—I—I—what do you think of it?"
"Of course it's an accident," said the old lady.
"I'm glad you think so," said he, abruptly.
"Why, what could it be? you don't believe in apparitions?" she replied, with an odd sort of dryness.
"I rather think not," said he; "I meant he left no very near relation, and I fancied those Deverell people might have contrived some trick, or intended some personation, or something, and I thought that you, perhaps, had heard something of their movements."
"Nothing—what could they have done, or why should they have sought to make any such impression? I don't understand it. It is very extraordinary. But the likeness in church amazed and shocked me, and made me ill."
"In church, you say?" repeated Sir Jekyl.
"Yes, in church," and she told him in her own way, what I shall tell in mine, as follows:—
Last Sunday she had driven, in her accustomed state, with Beatrix, to Wardlock church. The church was hardly five hundred yards away, and the day bright and dry. But Lady Alice always arrived and departed in the coach, and sat in the Redcliffe seat, in the centre of the gallery. She and Beatrix sat face to face at opposite sides of the pew.
As Lady Alice looked with her cold and steady glance over the congregation in the aisle, during the interval of silence that precedes the commencement of the service, a tall and graceful young man, with an air of semi-foreign fashion, entered the church, accompanied by an elderly gentleman, of whom she took comparatively little note.