"It is rather a coincidence, your fancying that Miss Lester looks like me, while I imagine that her grandmother—a dreadful old creature, by the way—resembles Mrs. Jenks, the old woman who nursed me when Roma was born."
Some startled questioning from her husband brought out the whole story of her visit to granny.
"Of course I was mistaken in taking her for Mrs. Jenks, but the old crone needn't have been so vexed over it," she said.
Edmund Clarke was startled, agitated, by what she had told him, but he did not permit her to perceive it.
He thought:
"What if I have stumbled on the solution of a terrible mystery? The likeness of Liane Lester to my wife is most startling, and, coupled with other circumstances surrounding her, might almost point to her being my lost daughter!"
He trembled like a leaf with sudden excitement.
"I must see this old woman—and to-night! I cannot bear the suspense until to-morrow!" he thought, and said to his wife artfully:
"Perhaps I am selfish, keeping you from poor Roma in her distress."
"I will go to her at once, poor child," she said, lifting her fair head from his breast.