“Oh, yes; and my mother is a most magnificent woman, too, Miss Huntress,” the young man returned, with a kindling face.
Gladys’ heart softened a trifle toward him at this. If he loved his mother like that there must be some good in him, she thought.
“Have you brothers and sisters?” she inquired.
“No, I am the only child. I was born within a year after my parents’ marriage, and there have been no other children.”
“Do you resemble your father or mother?”
“My father. My mother has often told me that I am very like what he was at my age; but there is a portrait of my grandfather Mapleson at home, which, but for the ancient style of dress, you would believe had been taken for me; the resemblance is every bit as striking as that between Huntress and me.”
“Has your father no brothers or sisters?” Gladys asked.
Everet Mapleson looked surprised.
He knew that she was trying to account in some way for Geoffrey Huntress’ likeness to himself; but, surely, he thought, she must know all about her cousin’s parentage and their connections, and it was a little singular that she should be so persistent in her inquiries regarding the Mapleson genealogy.
“No,” he replied; “my father was an only son. He had a sister, but she died while very young. The only other connections that I know anything about were an uncle who made my father his heir, and a distant cousin—a very eccentric sort of person. Both, however, are long since dead, and both died single. The Mapleson family was never a numerous one, and it is now almost extinct. I see, Miss Huntress,” he added, with a slight smile in which Gladys thought she detected something of scorn, “that you are trying to account for this resemblance upon natural principles; but it is simply impossible that we are in any way connected. The fact can only be attributable to a strange freak of nature.”