“Of course she is only a half-sister; I knew that.”
“But younger than either of them, you say? Oh, this is brain-splitting! She must be a cousin.”
“Really,” said Wylie stiffly, “I see no reason for us to trouble about the matter. No one ever doubted that she was their sister.”
“Well, we seem to have come upon a nice little double mystery. Look here, monsieur,” the artist cried to a man who was standing just inside the smoking-room, “come and adjudicate. What reason could a man have, whose name wasn’t Smith, for calling himself Smith, when he was doing nothing more heinous than coming with his sisters to stay with Professor Panagiotis?”
“English, of course?” said the stranger, joining them, and speaking with a slight foreign accent. “Why need one seek a reason, then? The pseudo-Smith is rich—perhaps noble—at home, and he desires a new sensation. Therefore he obtains one by travelling incognito.”
“Well, I suppose Teffany is comfortably off”—the stranger’s eyelid flickered as the artist spoke—“but there are no titles in the family, that I know of. Why in the world should he do it?”
“The natural modesty of the British character,” suggested the stranger.
“And there’s another thing. Why should he call a girl his sister who isn’t his sister?”
“If you ask me,” said the stranger waggishly, “I should say that it was some one else’s sister.”
“Oh, but two of them?” cried the artist. “Or, if one was genuine, how do you account for her tolerating the bogus one?”