“To think of her never having discarded it!” remarked the earl, releasing the cold hand. “Well, I can hardly believe the tale now.”
He turned and quitted the room as he spoke. Mr. Carlyle looked steadfastly at the dead face for a minute or two, his fingers touching the forehead; but what his thoughts or feelings may have been, none can tell. Then he replaced the sheet over her face, and followed the earl.
They descended in silence to the breakfast-room. Miss Carlyle was seated at the table waiting for them. “Where could all your eyes have been?” exclaimed the earl to her, after a few sentences, referring to the event just passed.
“Just where yours would have been,” replied Miss Corny, with a touch of her old temper. “You saw Madame Vine as well as we did.”
“But not continuously. Only two or three times in all. And I do not remember ever to have seen her without her bonnet and veil. That Carlyle should not have recognized her is almost beyond belief.”
“It seems so, to speak of it,” said Miss Corny; “but facts are facts. She was young and gay, active, when she left here, upright as a dart, her dark hair drawn from her open brow, and flowing on her neck, her cheeks like crimson paint, her face altogether beautiful. Madame Vine arrived here a pale, stooping woman, lame of one leg, shorter than Lady Isabel—and her figure stuffed out under those sacks of jackets. Not a bit, scarcely, of her forehead to be seen, for gray velvet and gray bands of hair; her head smothered under a close cap, large, blue, double spectacles hiding the eyes and their sides, and the throat tied up; the chin partially. The mouth was entirely altered in its character, and that upward scar, always so conspicuous, made it almost ugly. Then she had lost some of her front teeth, you know, and she lisped when she spoke. Take her for all in all,” summed up Miss Carlyle, “she looked no more like Isabel who went away from here than I look like Adam. Just get your dearest friend damaged and disguised as she was, my lord, and see if you’d recognize him.”
The observation came home to Lord Mount Severn. A gentleman whom he knew well, had been so altered by a fearful accident, that little resemblance could be traced to his former self. In fact, his own family could not recognize him: and he used an artificial disguise. It was a case in point; and—reader—I assure you it was a true one.
“It was the disguise that we ought to have suspected,” quietly observed Mr. Carlyle. “The likeness was not sufficiently striking to cause suspicion.”
“But she turned the house from that scent as soon as she came into it,” struck in Miss Corny, “telling of the ‘neuralgic pains’ that affected her head and face, rendering the guarding them from exposure necessary. Remember, Lord Mount Severn, that the Ducies had been with her in Germany, and had never suspected her. Remember also another thing, that, however great a likeness we may have detected, we could not and did not speak of it, one to another. Lady Isabel’s name is never so much as whispered among us.”
“True: all true,” nodded the earl. And they sat themselves down to breakfast.